A programme of quiet, contemplative films exposing nature’s rhythms, through cycles of life, death and the shifting seasons. Presenting two intimate portraits of humans’ relationship with the land and the struggle to survive within unforgiving natural and economic landscapes – preceded by a lyrical, abstract paean to metaphysical power of the mountains and forest.

Soramimi
Julia Laird, Daisy Dickinson
2016 | 3'30 min | Colour | Digital

Soramimi taps in to the rhythms of the forest. Channeling the positive and negative energies through the red and blue masks and eventually creating an abstract piece of ritualistic occurrence. All shot on super8 in the mountains of Japan by Daisy Dickinson (director/visual artist) and Julia Laird (director/photographer) with music by artist Grimm Grimm.

Le Quattro Volte
Michelangelo Frammartino
2010 | 88 min | Colour | 35mm

A beautiful and poetic vision of the revolving cycles of life and nature in the unbroken traditions of a timeless place, Le Quattro Volte appears as the metaphor of a soul that moves through four successive states of being.

An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, but believes that he can find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day. A new goat kid is born. We follow its first few tentative steps, its first games, until it gains strength and goes to pasture. Nearby, a majestic tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons, until transformed into fuel through the ancestral work of the local Calabrian charcoal makers.

To the Wolf
Aran Hughes, Christina Koutsospyrou
2013 | 74 min | Colour | DCP
Followed by Q&A with the directors hosted by Schtinter

"I saw a great epidemic. A chaos. I’d scream, people, it’s not going well, great poverty is coming!"

Set over four days of unrelenting wind and rain in a remote village high up in the Nafpaktia mountains in western Greece, the film follows the lives of two shepherd families struggling for survival. The village, forsaken by god and man, has seen better days. Paxnis, the seasoned old shepherd with no hope left, had already foreseen the dire straits the country would be facing and is slowly sinking into despair. Giorgos, unable to sell his goats, is weighed down by mounting debts and drinks to forget. Combining documentary and fiction with an all-local cast, To the Wolf is both the reality and an unsettling allegory of modern-day Greece.