A programme of ruins and resilience, of endnotes and epiphanies. With films by Nathaniel Dorsky, James Edmonds, Laura Huertas Millán, David Dudouit, Natalia Marín, and Hu Bo.
Wavelengths 4: We've Only Just Begun
Playing as part of this programme:
Île d'Ouessant
Completed posthumously by colleagues from the French artisanal film lab L'Abominable, David Dudouit's Île d'Ouessant is a breathtaking assembly of patient and precise single-frame exposures shot on the sparsely populated Atlantic island.
A Return
Replete with sophisticated camera movements and multiple exposures, James Edmond's A Return is an enveloping reflection on the secret, the private, and the unspoken. Structures shift and intermingle, as built and breathing worlds coalesce.
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle)
A coda to a recent suite of films, as much as a singular work in itself, Nathaniel Dorsky's Colophon (For the Arboretum Cycle) is a stunning, stirring triptych that gestures to Chinese landscape scrolls.
Man in the Well
Produced under the supervision of master filmmaker Béla Tarr, Hu Bo's Man in the Well is a raw and haunting tale of ruin and desperation, and a fitting companion to his other Festival selection An Elephant Sitting Still.
The Labyrinth
In Laura Huertas Millán's The Labyrinth, a nameless narrator roams and rummages the ruinous jungle compound of a former Colombian drug lord — modeled after the mansion from TV's Dynasty — invoking speculative pasts and futures alongside real histories of violence and decadence.
Julio Iglesias's House
Julio Iglesias's House by Natalia Marín is a rich and sardonic take on the conflation between nationalism, idealism, and the built world, inspired by a 2001 initiative in which Shanghai attempted to build a replica Spain by way of the pop icon's abode.