Research Statement

Sometimes it’s difficult to remember the genesis of a new film project. What compelled me to make this film and what is its message? Films are complex and at times overwhelming projects that demand granular attention at multiple stages. When I’m in the weeds and start to lose focus I try to retrace my thinking and foundational concepts, typically as developed in my scholarly publications. And indeed in some cases there are direct lines from my scholarship to my films. My 2014 film Preempting Dissent, co-produced with Andy Opel, was an adaption of our book of the same name (Elmer & Opel 2008). Yet, for some reason, even though The Fortunate Disaster (2025) is also an adaption, its inspiration and meaning eluded me for some time. Only recently, while making fine cuts to the film, did I begin to appreciate the complexity of its story, at face value a farcical promise of a future that made no sense. 

Research Questions

As a visual artist and scholarly researcher I find it helpful to recognize that the inspiration for a new film project, including its core research goals and questions, often stems from frustrations with my previous films. This is certainly the case with The Fortunate Disaster, a short film adapted from Garbriel Tarde’s (1896) science fiction novel Fragments D’Histoire (translated as Underground Man in 1905). One of the most challenging aspects of my past documentary films has been finding a coherent and compelling story from hours and hours of footage. Given my past interest in finding stock footage from largely closed countries, for example from a North Korean hosted student festival in 1989 (The Canadian Delegation 2018), my research questions often began with a simple question – is this film even possible? Can I even tell a story without adequate visual documentation of the event? But in the case of The Fortunate Disaster, I already had a novel that would serve as the building blocks of the script. In other words, adapting a novel made the search for a compelling storyline largely redundant, or so I thought. 

Tarde’s utopic-dystopic novel is presented in the futur antérieur, meaning the narrator recounts an event and history that has already happened -- the sun has burned out, yet humanity not only survived, it thrived after moving underground. The book’s narration invokes a degree of authority in its storytelling that seemingly downplays the need for iconic visual representation, as the narrative invites the reader to imagine something that has already occurred. Yet as I began adapting the novel, I found that I could not look past this ‘always-already’ form. I could not excuse Tarde’s completely inexplicable story, as the contradictions and counterintuitive claims overwhelmed me. Civilization would be better after it had been nearly exterminated? The sun’s demise would be welcomed, if not celebrated…? Heaven and earth would switch roles, with the promised land firmly encased underground. The abundant, rich life would be wedged firmly in between granite, rock and clay. 

Yet as I made my way through the novel, excising Tarde’s many tangents for the film script, this nonsensical story, and its inexplicability started to resonate with me on a deeper political level, likely prompted by Tarde’s orange faced protagonist who led the planet’s survivors underground. Perhaps the novel was intentionally inexplicable? If so, how could I represent this nonsensical, inexplicable story as a form of strategic, political rhetoric, as a promise so absurd as to represent something beyond explicability, beyond normative registers. 

The Merrian Webster dictionary (2026) defines inexplicable as not just “incapable of being explained or interpreted” but also incapable of being “accounted for”, suggesting that it somehow elides means of judgement, justice, norms, rules, language and even history. Latin definitions of in-explicabilis are even more foreboding: “not to be loosened…Obstructed, not to be traversed….with no result”. (Lewis 2026) This inexplicability, was foretold in H.G. Wells introduction to the first (1905) edition of Underground Man. Wells, whose science fiction masterpiece The Time Machine was published a year before Tarde’s Fragments D’Histoire, initially framed Tarde’s novel much like his own novel -- as a modernist projection, an anticipation of the power of industrial machines, and the subsequent mastery of nature. Yet Wells also professed confusion over the story, which he termed “a course of elusive ironies; sometimes …[Tarde] jests at contemporary ideas by imagining them in burlesque realisation, sometimes he jests at contemporary facts by transposing them into strange surroundings, sometimes he broaches fancies of his own chiefly for their own sake, yet with the well-managed literary equivalent of the palliating laugh of conversational diffidence.” (p. 6-7) Ultimately Well’s does not say for certain if Underground Man is meant to be taken seriously, or treated as an absurdist text: “One does not quite know how far M. Tarde is in this first part of his story… and how far he is sharing them.” (p. 9)

By comparison, Mauricio Lazzarato’s introduction to an updated version of Underground Man, retitled Underground: Fragments of Future Histories (Glick 2004), largely sidesteps questions of fictionalization or projection. In fact he only once even refers to the book as a novel, and only then to engage Tarde’s more well known social and political theories. (p. 13) Lazzarato instead focuses on the “value reversal” represented in the protagonist’s call for humanity to reject heaven for the underground: “We must say no more: 'Up there!' but, 'below!' There, below, far below, lies the promised Eden, the abode of deliverance and of bliss: there, and there alone, there are still innumerable conquests and discoveries to be made!” (Tarde 1905) Consequently, Lazzarato claims that “By making Nature disappear, Tarde is in reality criticizing a passive view of nature which legitimized the conqueror attitude of modern man…toward other human beings and living things.” (ibid)

But there is more to this reversal of values at play in Underground Man, there is as I’ve used in the title of my film, The Fortunate Disaster – a realized promise of riches on the back of catastrophe. Even the end of the world can be abundant and flush with riches. Hence I’m not necessarily refuting or disagreeing with Lazzarato’s selective interpretation of the book, rather I just recognized in it…more, namely an inexplicable promise that actively seeks to evade accountability, in short a lie or grift masquerading as an inevitable utopia. 

Methods

The adaptation of the novel served as a crucial object of inquiry during the research/creation of this film. To that end, the process of media making – or what Erin Mann (2016) calls making “…beyond the Object” (p. 134) – placed experimentation and parallel writing/shooting at the center of the process. I would read, revise and adapt the script as I began to shoot small iconic images that I imagined would serve as visual tropes in the film. With a 4K cinema camera I captured images of the sun, rain storms, rivers and lakes during various parts of the day and year. As part of another research project that investigated military bunkers, I captured images of urban bunkers, and underground metro stations. 

During these shots I re-read Tarde’s novel. As I’d yet come to grips with the visual style of the film, I decided to adopt  the novel’s first personal narration. I would then revise this narration to fit a short 10-15 minute film. I chose to use an AI generated narrator, to subtly undermine the authenticity and authority of the film’s central promise of an abundant underground life. The AI narrators robotic mispronunciations helped this goal, but this was later unintentionally ‘fixed’ when I had to revise the script and regenerate a narration file. A colleague would later comment on how I failed to credit the narrator in the film. 

During the revising of the script, the importance of the futur antérieur ‘promise’ started to change my thinking about the film’s visual treatment. My contemporary images didn’t compliment this inevitable past’s future, nor did it aesthetically capture the promise of an abundant life, post fortunate disaster. I needed to capture the political power of a ‘nostalgia of the future’. (Smith & Campbell) I sought out open source and creative commons archives for nostalgic images of (largely) American life in the 1930-1950s, particularly those that embraced rural and industrial tropes where humans were seen to be building a utopic society. As such, one could consider the film a hybrid found footage/internet remixed film, as described by Horwatt (2009). These online clips also included normative imagery around class, gender and race relations – images that continue to reinforce political movements in search of a nostalgic ‘great America’. The use of color images of the sun, and the absurd conclusion where the viewer sees an underground Versailles-like palace of riches further served to contrast with these propaganda-like black and white images. 

Outcomes

I would argue that this cinematic adaptation produces a form of nonsensical political critique. In so doing I admittedly made some heavy handed revisions to the original text. While Tarde had two political leaders in Underground Man, I instead focused on just one leader who appears in the novel just as the sun starts to burn out: “The spring returned at last, and the starry monarch reappeared, but his golden crown was gone, and he himself well-nigh unrecognisable. He was entirely red…Then, by degrees, from the red that he was he became orange.” (Tarde 1905) Coupled with the visual treatment discussed above, the film moves the original novel and critiques of the film from absurdity and post-industrial analysis to an understanding of the political rhetoric of both inevitability and the promise of inevitable and endless “winning”, represented by abundance in even the most inhumane environs. The film thus moves us beyond dismissive critiques of MAGA as stupidity or chaos, to a recognition of political/rhetorical strategies that serve to reinforce their own authority and unaccountability. 

Impact

The Fortunate Disaster is a challenging film that elides cinematic categorization. It is part sci-fi, part dystopic, and as has been argued herein, constitutes a critique of a political aesthetic. The film’s ultimate goal is to highlight how such abundant inexplicable promises need to be held to account. Its inexplicability must be recognized as a category, genre or rhetoric befitting discussion and debate. Given its brevity, abstraction and complexity, it will require complimentary film festival programming and educational accompaniments (study guides, questions for discussion, etc.) to foster its main themes. It’s impact will depend on its ability to cultivate other likeminded critiques of political imagination in an age of poly crisis. 

Bibliography

Elmer, G. & A. Opel. (2008) Preempting Dissent, Winnipeg: ARP Press. 

Glick, L. (2004) Underground (Fragments of Future Histories), Paris: Editions Micheline Szwajcer & Michèle Didier. 

Horwatt, Eli. (2009). “A Taxonomy of Digital Video Remixing: Contemporary Found Footage Practice on the Internet”. In: Iain Robert Smith (ed) Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation, Scope,  pp. 76-91.

Lazzarato, M. “Introduction”, in L. Glick (2004) Underground (Fragments of Future Histories), Paris: Editions Micheline Szwajcer & Michèle Didier. 

Lewis, Charles T. (2026). “Inexblicabilis”, An Elementary Latin Dictionary, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0060:entry=inexplicabilis

Manning, E. (2016). “Ten Propositions for Research-Creation” In: Colin, N., Sachsenmaier, S. (eds) Collaboration in Performance Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Merrian Webster dictionary (2026). “Inexplicable”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inexplicable

Smith, L. and Campbell, G. (2017). ‘‘Nostalgia for the future: memory, nostalgia and the politics of class”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(7), pp. 612–627.

Tarde, G. (1896) Fragments D’Histoire, Paris: Éditions V Giard et E. Brière. Trans. Underground Man (1905) London: Duckworth & Co.

Wells, H.G. Preface, in G. Tarde Underground Man (1905) London: Duckworth & Co.

Filmography

The Canadian Delegation. (2018). [Online]. Directed by Greg Elmer. Canada: SoJuDocs.

The Fortunate Disaster. (2025). [Online]. Directed by Greg Elmer. Canada: SoJuDocs.

Preempting Dissent.  (2014) [Online]. Directed by Greg Elmer & Andy Opel. Canada: SoJuDocs.

The Fortunate Disaster: Stock Footage 

Above the Horizon. (American Meteorological Society). 1967, United States, 

https://archive.org/details/abovethehorizon

Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/EIT Ultraviolet, 304 Ôæå__. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio). 2008, United States,  https://archive.org/details/SVS-3501 

Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/EIT Ultraviolet, 195 Ôæå__. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio). 2008, United States.

MRO Faces Huge Solar Flare. (NASA). 2009, United States. https://archive.org/details/SPD-MARS-mrogallerycruisesolar-flare-20050907 

Operation Doorstep. (U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration). 1953, https://archive.org/details/202270_Operation_Doorstep 

Summer Sun from SDO: Eruption and Coronal Loops on the Solar Limb. (NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio). 2016, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4323/ 

The Show Creature. (W. Lee Wilder). 1954,  

https://archive.org/details/the-snow-creature-1954

To New Horizons. (Handy Organization). 1940, United States, 

https://archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 

Trace observes the X-ray flare overA9906. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio). 2002, United States, https://archive.org/details/SVS-2446 

Peer Reviews

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response to what follows

Review 1: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

The Fortunate Disaster is an adaptation of Gabriel Tarde’s 1896 science fiction novel Underground Man. Tarde’s story is truncated and told in voiceover accompanying found footage. The images are often literal but quite powerful in combination with music; the film offers an interesting case study in how diverse images are assembled to form coherence in adaptation. Footage is credited to each clip’s identifier tags - this is useful for finding the sources, but it would be more rigorous to also list the original source. The image selection frequently marries Tarde’s late-19th century projections with the political culture of World War 2 and its aftermath. This combination fosters a sense of ‘future history’ and contributes a melancholy tone to the work. 20th-century iconography is deployed as a kind of counterfactual history, depicting a utopian global society in which the neutral affordance of technology offers prosperity while politics is a libidinal force of oppression. There is an interesting irony here that reflects both the techno-optimism of the post-war settlement and how that culture paves the way for autocracy and a hubristic rejection of nature. These ironies could be elaborated on in the statement, particularly in the concluding comments on resonance with contemporary politics. As well as a consideration of how these particular images contribute to that resonance, it might be helpful to have more reference to specific work such as ideas of ‘disaster capitalism’ that directly link elite prosperity with catastrophe. 

The research statement contextualises the film well against the author’s previous documentary work, where a narrative structure was created after collecting footage. Here, the source text provides the structure first. This difference produces a discussion of how divergent interpretations of the text might emerge amidst its apparent ‘inexplicability’. There is a good overview of how these interpretations generate a certain amount of ambivalence over how to parse the novel. However, it is not entirely clear how this ambivalence is tackled or resolved by the film, or how it has informed the author’s creative and research choices. I would suggest a clear articulation of the film’s role in adapting this aspect of the novel in particular. The statement is lacking any research context beyond this, including that which would help situate the film as part of a wider practice of using archival footage to craft fictional (or counterfactual) narratives. I was reminded, for example, of the work of Craig Baldwin, Rick Prelinger, Adam Curtis, and Guy Maddin. Some comment on the creative inspirations for the found footage approach would help determine the film’s contributions as practice-research.

The most pressing issue with the statement, however, is that it is not formatted according to the submission requirements of the journal. While I recognise that the production process did not necessarily begin with a 'research question' (indeed, there is a thoughtful reflection on being led by the polysemic nature of the source novel), the statement should be extensively rewritten to fit the publication conventions. This would clarify the film’s claims and provide a more robust context for it. 

Review 2: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

The Fortunate Disaster is a truly fascinating experiment that plays intelligently with the modes of both documentary and adaptation. Each mode in its own way is commonly understood to affirm the indexical nature of film, derivative of already existing worlds and texts that it strives to capture faithfully. The project’s exclusive use of found footage, however, manipulates that formula in surprising and compelling ways.

The Fortunate Disaster is an adaptation in at least two senses, not only remediating Tarde’s 1896 novel into film, but repurposing material from a range of television broadcasts, NFB documentaries, mid-century science-fiction B-movies, and NASA simulation footage. I struggle to think of another film that employs this experimental approach to adaptation: Elmer’s film seems unprecedented to me in this regard. I appreciated the anachronistic nature of much of the footage presented as our future past: mid-century images of automobiles and factories generate an unsettling sense of the misfits between Tarde’s fin-de-siecle context, his imagined future of 2489, and our own moment. 

The futur antérieur is a fertile concept for thinking through science fiction in the speculative mode. Since Wells and Tarde at least, this genre has transported audiences to its imagined futures, often recounted through retrospective narration. Many readers understand that this temporal jolt triggers the kind of “cognitive estrangement” that Darko Suvin understood to be crucial for science fiction’s critical allegorical effects and that furnishes an ideal vantage point from which to “look back” on our own moment. If Tarde’s novel does not technically employ the futur antérieur tense, the “tension” of this complex temporality is generated whenever an author asks the reader to bind their own future to the narrator’s past. In dystopian science fiction, a deeper tension arises from the fiction’s closure or refusal of the future. Is our tomorrow already written? Such fatalism haunts every contemporary discussion of climate change with the woeful possibility that we have already passed the point of no return, rendering futile any attempt to correct our current trajectory.

If resignation shadows the climate-consciousness of many citizens, Elmer recognizes a more actively exploitative tendency in our political leadership, with its closing gestures to Trump as the “orange” monarch prophesied in Tarde’s text. An agent of chaos, he has yet to be pinned down by the rubble he leaves everywhere in his wake. (Indeed, he muses blithely about building an oceanfront resort in the debris of Gaza.) The film’s title, along with the text of the statement’s final paragraphs, productively evoke Naomi Klein’s conception of “Disaster Capitalism” (2007), and the body of socio-political commentary that traces out how neo-liberal actors exploit natural disasters and other crises to implement privatization and deregulation. Of course, Tarde’s text also dramatizes this narrative of “adaptation” in the Darwinian sense, telling the story of changing relations between creatures and their environment, facilitated in the twenty-first century by cynical corporate opportunists. One answer to anthropocenic crisis is to shun the sun and the earth entirely, as called for by Musk’s “Occupy Mars” sloganeering. Such a turn necessitates a shift from reliance upon our ecosystem’s natural resources to dependence upon the artificial resources supplied by extractive firms within corporate enclosures. 

The Fortunate Disaster stands out as an ambitious and intellectually rich work whose innovative use of found footage offers a very original approach to adaptation, while its engagement with speculative temporality and environmental crisis opens compelling avenues for critical reflection.  

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response