Person-Plant-Plant-Person

Oral histories on kelp farming, a cosmic pondering of monoculture pine plantations and a dialogue on lichens. This selection of short and mid-length films take different formal approaches to consider the world of plants. Perhaps the ultimate Slow Cinema subject, plants exist on a different timescale to us, their movements and growth unseen, their role in our lives so foundational that they are taken for granted. In cinema generally plants are background, mise-en-scène, but here they are the subject, depicted as metaphors to be guided by, as an animating spiritual force and as the fragile basis for whole economies and ways of life. This trio of beautiful and poignant films consider the lives of plants and our entangled past present and future.

Seaweed

Julia Parks / 2022 / UK /18:33

This 16mm moving image artwork explores the folklore, ecology, and history of seaweed in northern Scotland. Voiced by seaweed harvesters, workers in the alginate factories, environmental activists, archaeologists & seaweed farmers behind the miracle resource. The film includes archive footage, oral histories and contemporary documentary footage of people working with seaweed.

Les Rites de Passage

Florian G.M. Fischer, Johannes Krell / 2024 / Germany / 14:41

"Les Rites de Passage" is dedicated to the decay of monocultural forests, fossilized memories and ritual acts.

Small holes appear inside a spruce tree, left by bark beetles to lay their brood. The tiny openings reveal a forest plantation that was cultivated for economical purposes. As a result of climatic developments, the spruce population is in decline and creates now a breeding ground for future life forms. (1) Fossils form a planetary time window that exceeds the limits of human experience. 300 million year old petrified roots and trees, preserved by the ash fall of a volcano, appear as silent witnesses to the transformation of things. (2) A burial and ritual site was built around 7000 years ago for observing the sky and aligned with the light axis of the winter and summer solstice. Performative sequences of a light figure enter into an exchange with the possible stories of the place. (3) The film forms an alliance of human and non-human, planetary and spiritual history, which is in a permanent state of becoming and passing.

Lichens are the Way

Ondřej Vavrečka / Czech Republic, Slovakia / 2024 / 40:00

Lichens are amazing organisms. A combination of a fungus and algae, two life forms that once upon a time decided to enter into symbiosis with each other. Fungi provides shelter to the algae whereas algae provides nutrition to fungi. Therefore, their union is beneficial for both parties. Or in other words: It is better to live together than to live alone. Lichens Are the Way is a loving and thought-provoking close-up study of radically different life forms, and of what happens when we turn our attention to beings and life forms outside our own scale. Imaginative, organic film shot in Canadian wilderness, where lichenologist superstar Trevor Goward and his partner have created a home together in the symbiotic spirit of the object of their studies.