LANDSCAPE: ABSTRACT & CONCRETE

Is landscape a background extra in the human story, or the protagonist? In one film, a white mist takes centre stage, dominating the narrative. In another, the camera ventures through rural and urban environments from increasingly ludicrous angles. It transforms into an antagonist during a fraught journey for a father and his sick son, and then further becomes a pivotal background player in wider political conflict, as a documentarian arrives in Beirut – the cityscapes, sunsets over ports, and building facades all take up as much filmic space as the protests occurring between them. Even as landscapes are occupied, through film, they become the occupier.

Laws of Nature

Tony Hill / 1996 / UK / 25:00

An experimental film that looks afresh at landscape by using the medium to explore its time and space in ways other than ‘eye view’. A rich, sensual, densely textured film poem that sets out to challenge perceptual habits without being drawn into the seductive trap of the picturesque.

The Whitest of Shadows

Damien Cattinari / 2024 / France / 11:24

One winter morning, crows are heard in the distance. A thick mist covers the shore. A world wakes up, and makes another landscape sound.

Detours

Vida Guzmić / 2024 / Croatia / 23:48

Detours is an experimental documentary shot in Lebanon from 2019 to 2021 dealing with issues of dislocation, points of view and memory. Detours builds a narrative of sensory impressions, orientations, alienated images, images that remain outside of the frame. The work is not a documentation or analysis of current policies and turbulent events but an experience of disorientations within them.

The Body is Getting Cold

Przemysław Krzysztof Kopacz / 2024 / Poland / 22:00

A father sets off on a journey with his sick son. The journey is a chance for him to redeem his faults and spend the last, precious moments with his son.