Now Available: Dominic Angerame’s Bigger Than Us, The Berkeley Pit, Butte, Montana

Posted March 5th, 2026 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events

Bigger Than Us, The Berkeley Pit, Butte, Montana (2026, 9 minutes, color, sound, digital file)

This is an environmental film. A visual essay of a superfund site located in Butte Montana. An acid lake formed as a result of an abandoned strip mine.

“In Bigger Than Us, Dominic Angerame brings us closer to what looks like the sublime spectacle of nature, but is in fact a man-made environmental hazard: a massive, scenic lake filled with water so acidic that it turns once one of the world’s largest mining enterprises into one of the deadliest places on earth. Today managed as a Superfund site tied to Montana’s mining history, the Berkeley Pit in Angerame’s film is a complex, multilayered and ambiguous phenomenon. While Butte’s desolate, haunting landscape is a remnant of the city’s postindustrial legacy, walking through the eerie tunnel provides a more personal and radically different experience firmly rooted in the present and punctuated by Toney Merritt’s ominous original score. It leads to the viewing platform where the pit’s emerald green waters blend with the crystal blue sky overlooking the stunning, surreal scenery. Reflecting the ‘danger in filming danger’ Angerame experienced when shooting at the edge of the abyss, the Berkeley Pit is not just the former site of the Anaconda Copper Mine and Butte’s popular tourist attraction, but a constant reminder of the environmental challenges we are facing in the Anthropocene.”
— Kornelia Boczkowska