nature

When director and ethnologist Hana Nováková encountered an elk, it changed her life. And she wasn't the first. For centuries, people across continents and cultures have been fascinated by this ancient totem animal, one of the largest mammals in the northern hemisphere. Whereas in the past they wanted to conquer it, today they tend to listen to it. The director's cinematic odyssey is the result of several years of searching for the secrets of the moose. It leads from Czech forests through a Russian domestication station to the territory of the indigenous peoples of Canada. A collage of stories told from personal, spiritual, and scientific perspectives shows the moose as a guide between worlds, a symbol of balance and renewal, and a possible answer to the question of how we can heal our relationship with nature.“Filming animals across the planet is an extraordinarily epic undertaking—all the more so when it involves a ‘process film,’ i.e., the unfolding observation of events whose outcome we often cannot predict, even though we know for certain that they were triggered by the filming itself.” — Hana NovákováSource: Dok.revue

The landscape of Eastern Australia, born of extinct volcanoes and solidified magma, both barren and lush, connects to the Pacific volcanic arc. Multiple exposures on 16mm film directly in the camera create visual overlaps and disrupt the gravitational logic of the image, while dynamic editing scrambles time and space – the present sinks into the depths of geological memory. This environmental visual poem is accompanied by field recordings and musical compositions by Lawrence English.“Filmed across the lands of the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples in Australia. We acknowledge them as the Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Keepers of the land. Sovereignty has never been ceded.”

The film captures the ambivalent nature of the Tyrolean landscape around the Bürglkopf mountain. The idyll of Alpine nature, grazing cattle, babbling brooks, and breathtaking panoramas is disrupted by the knowledge that there is a refugee centre at the top of the mountain. Unauthorized entry is prohibited, contact with people inside is undesirable, and cameras are completely denied access behind the walls. The strict regime that asylum seekers must adhere to guarantees them only one thing: a minimal chance of remaining in the safety of Austria. Despite the restrictions, however, the director finds a way to conduct interviews with the centre’s residents outside the premises, against the backdrop of deep forests in the foothills. Their authentic testimonies reveal not only their personal experiences and reasons for fleeing, but also the reality of everyday life in the facility itself. The complex picture is complemented by the testimonies of those who have passed through the centre and settled in Austria, as well as critical voices from locals expressing strong empathy. It turns out that even in the face of an inhumane bureaucratic apparatus, people can retain their dignity and hope. “You broke my heart when you said that the cow has a better life than us.”

Do the physical properties of rocks change in the presence of humans? Filmmakers follow the work of a scientist who listens to changes in sound frequencies in a vast wasteland after a volcanic eruption. Her geoacoustic research prompts reflections on the possibility of consciousness in inanimate objects, and their mutual communication. “The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone: only a prejudice could make us think the earth beneath our feet is not alive.” — Conrad Anker, mountaineer

The genealogical journey to discover the origins of exotic plant species begins in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid. It was here that a mysterious box containing seeds from an expedition to South America in 1936 was found. The journey back in time and space to southern Peru involves uncovering layers of a turbulent past. Scientific knowledge and the cataloguing of flora helps explain the nature of colonial extraction of everything valuable and contributes to establishing at least partial justice and eradicating historical injustices. National heritage here functions as a non-obvious social construct that must be fought for and cared for in order to preserve its integrity. The ambient still life of the hacienda reveals the suspected brutality of the slave era. “The presence of the observer could never be neutral. Whether he is aware of it or not.”

This film, which straddles the line between fiction and documentary, is based on the director’s own book, and explores the tension between personal memory and imagination. The author returns to his childhood, when he shared everyday adventures with his friend Zeta, with whom he observed the surrounding world from the treetops, and created fictional stories about their neighbours. Years later, these memories intertwine with a reconstruction of the last hours of Zeta’s life, who tragically died as a member of a bus crew. The actor’s voice presents his thoughts and feelings during the journey, as imagined by the author of the film. They clash with the real testimonies and telephone conversations of passengers in the present, as they travel through the dry and mountainous Chilean landscape. Part of the film traverses the streets from the author’s memories via Google Street View, raising the question of digital memory, the capture of place and time, and the intertwining of reality with its virtual imprint. The work deals with the loss of a loved one, memory, and the ways in which film images and storytelling can capture transience.“I looked for your dad on Facebook. He told me you’d been hired as a stewardess for a bus company, and that you never came back.”

The Menominee tribe is connected to nature through their shared wisdom of caring for trees and forests. The revival of traditional logging methods and efforts to preserve permaculture freedom clash with the prevailing approaches of extensive logging for human needs. The complex topic of the relationship between human communities and forests is viewed from many perspectives – architects, loggers, teachers, economists, and activists explain our essential civilizational connection to trees as guardians of the landscape and memory. This educational documentary offers hope in the form of examples of natural recultivation and sensitive care. “When I talk about the environment, I am not talking just about dirty rivers or climate change or acid rain. I mean the people as well. Therefore, I am very interested in rural communities and how they live with their environment and what they gain from it. So it took me naturally to how we deal with the world’s forests.” — Fred Pearce, environmental journalist

In mid-2024, Chad experienced its worst drought in decades, most of the livestock died, people moved elsewhere, and the city disappeared. A chance encounter at a water well in the desolate Batha Prefecture opens a window into the situation of a Central African country affected by climate change. “The droughts and floods in Chad aren’t isolated – they reflect broader climate change driven largely by industrialized nations.” — Bentley Brown

Canada, Japan, Antarctica. Deep underground, scientific institutions have built gigantic telescopes designed to emit invisible particles and study the properties of objects smaller than atoms. The radioactive noise of neutrinos and its visualization offers a mesmerizing poetic immersion into the operation of complex devices and the subatomic depths of black holes. The abstract imagery of gigantic machines, reminiscent of a science fiction film, contrasts with the precise research of particle scientists. Meditative exploration leads us to essential questions that occupy the scientific, philosophical, and artistic communities: Why does matter exist rather than nothing? “Studying our own galaxy is like standing inside a forest and this is like looking at one from above. We can see deeper into the structure with infrared light, radio waves and X-rays, but from the outside, the black hole is still impossible to see.” — commentary from the film

The Sandia Mountains in New Mexico, located on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, combine steep snow-capped cliffs with the aridity of the desert at their base. This visual portrait of the landscape, in which the mountains come alive, pulsate, and transform, is accompanied by an audio mix of extreme temperatures and songs of the Pueblo tribes who have lived here since time immemorial. Techniques based on the tradition of experimental film, such as frame by frame copying, painting, collage, and engraving into the material, draw the digital image into a visual trance. “Mélissa Faivre’s work is immersive, hallucinatory or even vertigo-inducing, depending on your reception, or possibly your viewing experience. They are rich in colour, movement and associations. The films are based on camera images, and on photographs reproduced frame by frame and layered with video images via compositing and montage creating new imaginations. […] The montage reaches a level of multi-dispersion that seems to be pure fantasy; at the same time it has a potential to trigger your individual memories and associations.” — Walden Kunstausstellungen Source: http://www.galerie-walden.de/INFECTED%20REALITY-english.pdf

A digitally animated glitch composition layers, abstracts, and mutates technological traces of remnants—Pompeian relics, torsos, X-ray images, shots of animals—into a rhythmic whole. The field alternately fills and empties, while the sound purrs and hums; the minimalist audiovisual composition achieves absolute, albeit elusive, precision. “Like a creation myth, [the film] represents the potential to create and release something new, like a pixel primordial soup. It emphasizes the act of watching, observing, perceiving, and receiving images. It shows the relationship between photographic technology, the apparatus itself, ‘the machine,’ and the complex distortions of perception and imagination. Made with a malfunctioning 1990s special effects device.” — accompanying material for the film

Marion Guillard is an ornithologist and filmmaker who has been capturing wild nature since her youth. Images of nature also dominate her autobiographical essays. However, the author's voiceover tells a story that is different from the journey across the United States she once embarked on with her family—it tells of her complex relationship with her own body and sexuality. Parallels gradually emerge between seemingly unrelated topics. The bulimia Guillard suffered from as a teenager was not limited to fast food. Similarly, she did not limit herself in collecting footage of the landscape, which helped her divert her attention from her own physicality. With the passage of time, she realizes how much she was determined by culture and society in both cases – in her view of herself and the outside world. “A succession of sequences illustrating various forms of representation of nature, such as wildlife films, natural parks and zoos, are set in motion around my personal experience as a wildlife filmmaker, visual artist, ornithologist, woman and body.” — Marion Guillard