Georgy Bagdasarov, Alexandra Moralesová, Czech Republic, Armenia, 2014
Comment
From the beginning of the film, the viewer is plunged into a powerful sensory universe: close-ups of branches, the image trembles, while the highly amplified sound seems to accompany the steps of an invisible being treading on the grass: we are at ground level, in the middle of branches being pushed aside. Very quickly, as the frame widens over a forest clearing, the shadows of two characters (the filmmakers) appear, moving forward with a camera in hand. We are at the heart of their experiment: they relate, in a totally experimental way, the processing of a plant, from hunting for it in the forest to its transformation into a medical preparation. Instead of recounting the stages in a linear fashion, the editing mixes up a series of images that are superimposed and repeated in a loop, laid on top of each other in almost stroboscopic bursts of white light, plunging the viewer into a hypnotic state. Only the filmmakers' hands appear in the image, crumpling leaves, turning the pages of the botanical journal, giving him the impression that he himself is participating in the preparation of the mysterious liquid, which bears the name of the plant that gives the film its eponymous name: Rhus Typhina. The sounds of insects buzzing above the sound of the branches, a shot of an abandoned greenhouse, and a cat silhouetted in the tall grass are reminiscent of Jonas Mekas' images. However, here, the filmmakers are not content to document, the gathering and preparation of the plant: the choice of shooting in black and white, the total absence of any context, the attention paid to elements that could belong to very distant times - the cat, the greenhouse, the botanical dictionary - and the very particular choice of image quality you get from shooting in 16 mm evoke a desire to link the present and the past closely together.
Comment
From the beginning of the film, the viewer is plunged into a powerful sensory universe: close-ups of branches, the image trembles, while the highly amplified sound seems to accompany the steps of an invisible being treading on the grass: we are at ground level, in the middle of branches being pushed aside. Very quickly, as the frame widens over a forest clearing, the shadows of two characters (the filmmakers) appear, moving forward with a camera in hand. We are at the heart of their experiment: they relate, in a totally experimental way, the processing of a plant, from hunting for it in the forest to its transformation into a medical preparation. Instead of recounting the stages in a linear fashion, the editing mixes up a series of images that are superimposed and repeated in a loop, laid on top of each other in almost stroboscopic bursts of white light, plunging the viewer into a hypnotic state. Only the filmmakers' hands appear in the image, crumpling leaves, turning the pages of the botanical journal, giving him the impression that he himself is participating in the preparation of the mysterious liquid, which bears the name of the plant that gives the film its eponymous name: Rhus Typhina. The sounds of insects buzzing above the sound of the branches, a shot of an abandoned greenhouse, and a cat silhouetted in the tall grass are reminiscent of Jonas Mekas' images. However, here, the filmmakers are not content to document, the gathering and preparation of the plant: the choice of shooting in black and white, the total absence of any context, the attention paid to elements that could belong to very distant times - the cat, the greenhouse, the botanical dictionary - and the very particular choice of image quality you get from shooting in 16 mm evoke a desire to link the present and the past closely together.