The Flysch of the Basque Coast is an impressive geological site facing the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean. These cliffs have a spectacular formation of vertical rock layers known as “flysch deposits”. In the manner of a large encyclopedia, they show the last 60 million years of the history of the Earth. All kinds of planetary events have been recorded in the vertical rock strata of this place: the cataclysm caused by the meteorite that made the dinosaurs go extinct, the inversion of the magnetic poles, or a past climate change that warmed up the Earth causing a massive extinction. One could say this place is like the memory of the world since a big part of the planetary history has been written here in stone.

In Permanent Being we explore the geology of this landscape and the stories embedded in it. In order to do so, the film uses various cinematic means, both formal and narrative, that allow us to “experience” the vast temporality of the stone. Each rock stratum is like a long exposure photograph that registered the image of a long-gone world. But if one day our current time is also turned into stone, how would it be remembered? How would these stones remember us?