Celestine (Florida Storm)

This trancelike experimental film captures a starry night sky over rural North Florida. A recording of “Florida Storm,” a 1928 hymn written by Judge Jackson in response to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 — a text that has informed Allison Janae Hamilton’s work for years — plays on a loop underneath various celestial scenes made from time-lapse astrophotography. The film hearkens to the history of North Florida’s turpentine industry — a brutal system of labor where workers began the workday before sunrise and toiled until well after sunset — and contemplates how their only moments of rest or leisure must have taken place under the cover of this starry expanse.