在这部Al haffar片中,For twenty years, Sultan Zeib Khan has kept watch over a ruined Neolithic necropolis in the Sharjah desert in the United Arab Emirates. Although majestic, the wide-angle shots have no monumentalising intent: the beauty and extent of the site speak for themselves. What is playing out here is the possibility for one man to become part of a landscape that overwhelms him yet seems to need his help. Seen under the silhouette of a rock about to devour him or as a dwarfed figure spade in hand walking from the back of the frame, Sultan curiously busies himself from day to day to prevent the ruins… from falling into ruin. Hamlet’s words in the famous gravedigger scene come to mind: “Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He sings at grave-making.” But here the human remains have long since become archaeological artefacts: the highly luminous outside sequences alternate with shots inside a museum where the bones are sorted and laid out for the visitor’s eye. The switching between day and night but also the soundscape of the man’s singing and the sound of his transistor radio suggest that even the greatest solitude can allow itself be inhabited. Above all, it underlines the paradox of these empty tombs, where death is compounded by the absence of the relics. – Charlotte Garson
Shot in the Sharjah desert in the United Arab Emirates, The Digger follows the everyday life of Sultan Zeib Khan, the Pakistani caretaker who has been guarding the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis for twenty years. A witness to the nation's founding mythologies, Sultan preserves archeological ruins, keeping them from falling into ruin. In the midst of these empty graves that echo the vastness of the desert, the absence of corpses is more unsettling than their presence.
