Two Filmmakers Have Used Miniatures and VR To Re-Create the Experience of the 2022 Floods

Many of us remember watching with horror as the 2022 floods ravaged eastern Australia.

The catastrophic damage and the lingering impact on those who lost their homes forms the subject of The World Came Flooding In, a new mixed-media installation by filmmakers Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine.

Made in close collaboration with a trio of people – Marina Perkovich who lived on the banks of the Maribynong River, Tom Doig of Brisbane, and Antoinette O’Brien from Lismore – severely affected by the floods, the installation re-creates each person’s lost home using miniatures and VR to put viewers in their shoes.

The project is a personal one for Knowles and Sowerwine, the latter of whom recounts a close call getting stuck in a dangerous ocean rip in Brunswick Heads in 2022. “I’m a really strong swimmer and I have never experienced anything like it,” Sowerwine tells Broadsheet. “That wasn’t, obviously, a flood. It was not the same thing at all. But you realize the power of water and how it can turn and become something that you are really not expecting at all.”

“We were skirting around the edges of all the different floods in 2022. Mullumbimby, I was there just before it flooded. Byron Bay, we were there for work and it flooded,” Knowles says.

The miniatures re-create each home in incredible detail. Each model took about a month to make.

“We worked closely with three people [affected by the floods]. Firstly, talking to them, hearing their stories and working out where they lived and getting a picture of it in our minds. And then they sent us photos and described the space to us. Then, we worked really closely with them to get a sense visually of what the space would look like. And then we went away and built it all,” Sowerwine says.

“And then we took those minis back to the [three subjects] and re-interviewed them, looking at the minis to see if they brought up different memories,” Knowles says.

As well as the models, the filmmakers have created a 30-minute virtual reality simulation, which allows viewers to explore the flood-affected properties. The simulation is narrated by the homeowners.

These are “real people’s experiences of the reality of climate change. It’s really hitting all of us at some stage, in various different ways,” Sowerwine says.

Throughout the process, the filmmakers were encouraged by people from flood-affected communities, who hoped the work would help others empathise with what they went through. They hope the work highlights the urgency of the climate emergency.

“You think, ‘It’s several years later, everyone’s fine’, but actually people have been through something really quite full-on, and it’s not just about cleaning up after [the floods]. There’s a lot more involved in it,” Knowles says.

“Having that deeper understanding, I think, creates more compassion.”

The World Came Flooding In is on display at ACMI until Sunday as part of MIFF and Now or Never. Entry is free.

miff.com.au/program/film/the-world-came-flooding-in