Film

STRUCTURE

We humans, think of ourselves at the center. We even refer to nature as ‘our environment’, something around us, as opposed to looking at it as a cooperative mechanism that we belong to. But with this movie we want to invite the spectators to reconsider our place on this planet. Getting a new perspective on space, time and transformation.

The film is a continuous discourse delivered by scientists, researchers, linguists, philosophers, artists, social workers, conservationists, elders, youths and children. The narrative is weaved together in waves of thought and creative visuals. The balance between the profiles of each character is like a dance, setting the rhythm. There is a fluidity between each element, season and theme. It is like one large sentence. In this discourse, children are a leitmotif as they are the future and the present, the vastness which is incomparable with our narrow adult vision.

The "silence" which is left is the space given to the language of nature : the main character supported by all the others. It speaks to us in winds, rumbles, waves and bird calls as we embark in an Odyssey through the four seasons, across the UK.

The film starts with an ode to an element : a seed, the « acorn », which is one of the words that disappeared from children’s dictionary in 2007. This begins the journey in Autumn and takes us through to the end of the next summer.

In the fall we explore the idea of forgetting and reminiscing. The first protagonists are senior citizens in care homes who are trying to remember their relationship to nature and to nature’s names. The season is copper, brown, red, yellow and getting darker as winter comes closer.

Winter, with its black rocks, its snowy and icy landscapes, blues, whites and greys, is a time to talk about the feeling of absence and extinction – our thoughts on loss but also our hope in conservation. Here, as we listen to the sounds of the earth, we get to think about how we fit into geological time...

Spring comes around, more luminous with its greens and flowering trees. It is a season to reconnect with this nature which we have become estranged from.

Finally, summer arrives, full bloom. It is a time for humanity to fall back and let nature take over. It is the moment to move past our desire for connection and wonder how we can change our anthropocentric perspective on the world.

AN EMPATHETIC APPROACH

Our challenge has been to steer away from the anxiety driven ecological narrative and give lightness to deep themes. As important questions travel through the film, they are brought with kindness but also curiosity.

The public will be leaving the film with scientific information, concrete facts, poetic inspiration and knowledge which goes through disciplines. But with an emotional approach, we can go beyond the purely informative. Each protagonists speaks from a different background but with a similar purpose : show how interwoven all life is. As we conducted interviews, we demanded the same openness and candour from children, artists, researchers and scientists; hoping that the interaction would provoke at least one question inside the protagonist’s minds - or even a shift in perspective.

The hope is to do the same with the public. Challenging them to reconsider their position while ‘cradling’ them in nature's gentle hands.

We do not intend to leave the viewer hanging in doubt, but open, curious and moved. Feeling that, yes, we can work together.

A HUMAN PROCESS

The search for the voices that could accompany this landscape happened over many years of meeting a multitude of protagonists throughout the UK.

This has been done by collaborating closely with institutions like the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh and the National Museum of Scotland, but also by creating workshops and artistic activities to introduce nature's names and science through organisations like The John Muir Trust or Action For Conservation.

Each interaction was planned methodically, from musicians playing music in nature, children discovering the geology of their local school area, to an artist bringing a workshop to Alzheimer's patients so they could paint the nature that they are struggling to recall...

What we have noticed with this process is that even the making of the film has left scientists pensive, children curious, teachers invested and the elderly creating collections of artwork for their care home walls.

Our project is a change in narrative but it is also a human story of care for each other and other earthlings.

SCIENCE IN ART, ART IN SCIENCE

Linking science to Art is essential to this film, but also looking at art as a translation of science. At the base of this documentary is a will to make every piece of information accessible to a wide public. Intending not to make this film exclusively for children, which would mean dialling down on the science, we use art to bridge the gaps.

This has been a great part of the preparation for this documentary : finding creative ways to interpret the science and connect to nature. This took many shapes, from artist scientists to projects that bring research to artists.

Living Symphonies create interactive compositions in the landscape, broadcasting their immersive creations in the natural space, Chris Wallbank works as a bird conservationist and is also a passionate wildlife painter returning to specific locations depending on the season to paint the changing bird population, Karine Polwart sings in the voice of a dead Palm Tree in the botanical gardens, The Spell Singers stand out in the middle of a highland winter to sing a song about the vanishing of the Snow Hare ... Through some of these key characters and the use of the creative editing, we see science and art going hand in hand for the entire film.

Visuals and creative sound carry us through this narrative, giving us a guttural feeling for the knowledge handed to us. Both the camerawork and the sound collection has been done by a real immersion into the UK landscape over several years and many seasons.

As a team of four women, we travelled around the UK collecting imagery, recording sound through geophones, hydrophones and immersive recording set ups.

All these elements help us invite you into the landscape...