From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Contre-Rotation
This article is about a 2014 French-Congolese experimental film. For other reversal and cyclical works, see Adaptations that resolve the glitch.
A 73-minute experimental film shot in reverse chronological order, designed to be viewed backward through standard projection, staging Beach Surgery's narrative as a spiral that unwinds rather than tightens. The film restages Half One — Newcastle and Half Two as a single continuous descent, moving from Leif's fall (the climax) backward to the moment he first arrives blindfolded and heartless—a slow undoing of injury, of wound-closure, of forgetting.
The directors treat the reverse as a philosophical method: if the cycle repeats eternally, what if we walk it backward? Can breaking the sequence mean simply refusing forward motion? The film contains no dialogue, only the sound of the earth's rotation slowing, accelerating in reverse, the Kármán boundary dissolving into atmosphere. Katita's figure, traced in 16mm, appears to be simultaneously constructing and deconstructing her armour.
The film's original score, commissioned by [cn], remains in private archives. Premiered at Visions du Réel, 2014; sporadically screened at festival retrospectives. Reception contested—some readings treat it as a meditation on repair; others as a refusal of narrative altogether.