A closer look, however, reveals Royal as being more than just a dying town - it is a complex site for the interplay of presence and absence, time and timelessness. Given time, the town's quiet pace of life emerges, almost unnoticeably, from its still and empty surfaces. Through sounds and images of the slow and humble rhythms of daily life, we begin to see the various presences that leave their traces in the town's empty public spaces; we observe the passage of time materializing from still, timeless images; and we begin to discern the beauty and quiet humor of everyday life in this small town.


Royal, Nebraska has been shown at Ethnographies Without Texts workshop (Harvard University, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA, USA, April 2007), Media Fields Conference (UC Santa Barbara, Ca, USA, April 2007), Beyond Text conference at the 10th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film (University of Manchester, UK, July 2007), SIGGRAPH (San Diego, CA, USA, August 2007), Strange Screen Film & Video Festival (Thessaloniki, Greece, October 2007 – awarded 2nd Creative Documentary Award), Oczy i obiektywy V Festival (Warsaw, Poland, March 2008).