A View from Above (by Dylan Werkman)

We soar, we plunge, we labour: here is all peak human experience

An astronaut is launched into orbit, his body tightly confined inside his suit and vessel, his mind enraptured by his new perspective on Earth. A boxer pumps himself up before a big match, repeating the mantra ‘you can’t change destiny’ before plunging into the controlled chaos of a fight. Two young men roll a joint, smoke it and lay down in a euphoric daze. Preparing for the birth of her child at hospital, a woman enters the painful throes of labour with her partner by her side. A man approaches a diving platform, peers over the edge to take in the height and plunges into the swimming pool.

These are the disparate narrative threads that the Dutch filmmaker Dylan Werkman weaves in his ambitious short film A View from Above, tethering these scenes together with craft and care to form a single, sprawling story. The rattling and beeping sounds of a spacecraft entering orbit bleed into a boxer in the heat of combat. Edits juxtapose the man’s walk up to the high dive with the astronaut’s journey to the space shuttle. Each strand shares a cinematic shot-on-film aesthetic and contemplative pace. While depicting these extremes of human experience, Werkman draws out elements that unite all of humanity – views of the Earth, the sounds of breathing and heartbeats, the experience of birth – evoking human life as an inevitably shared endeavour.

That Werkman, who created A View from Above while studying at the Netherlands Film Academy, isn’t overmatched by his stratospheric ambitions is an impressive feat. Meditations on the wondrous smallness of the Earth when viewed from space is well-tread filmic territory. But immersing the viewer in the shakiness of the space capsule and, ultimately, the parachute ride back down to Earth, he brings these scenes a true sense of intimacy and tension, and, upon entering orbit, breathtaking serenity. Through this, and from the many small glimpses into of terrestrial life below, emerges a bold and poetic exploration of peak human experience and ascendence.

Written by Adam D’Arpino

Director: Dylan Werkman

Producers: Marrit Greidanus, Pieter Kapteijns

Cinematographer: Jaap Mar Diemel

30 MARCH 2022

A view from above | Psyche Films

 

 

Your Mountain is Waiting (by Hannah Jacobs and Harriet Gillian)

 

Martha’s adventures through the washing machine looking-glass

On first watch and without context, Your Mountain Is Waiting may seem like simply a showcase for some very talented filmmakers. In its slightly uncanny animated world, a young woman named Martha is struggling in ways that seem both mundane (her plants are dying; she seems alone even when around others) and surreal (bugs and other critters keep making ominous cameos in her urban life). The dreary mood is drawn out by a muted, blue-dominated colour palette and dissonant score. Her difficulties are disrupted when a fox, trailing her throughout, guides her to a launderette. There, she tumbles through a washing machine and into a hallucinatory world overflowing with saturated hues and dreamlike landscapes. Eventually tumbling out and back into reality, the blues surrounding her have given way to a spectrum of colour. Back in her apartment, her plants are bright and sway with life. This has all the hallmarks of a familiar transformation narrative, echoing Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole or Dorothy’s trip into Oz. Yet, without any dialogue, its meaning might feel hazy, giving the film a first-glance appearance of a lush visual journey for its own sake. An excellent ride, but perhaps with no clear destination.

Yet another rich layer is added once you know what inspired the director Hannah Jacobs and the writer Harriet Gillian. ‘This film is about trusting your gut and following your instincts,’ says Jacobs. And, as Gillian puts it, ‘one of the messages of the film is to get outdoors in order to reconnect with your intuition.’ Through this frame, the blue-tinted urban malaise of Martha’s everyday life, compared with the vividness of the outdoor world, comes into clearer focus. Movements and scene-changes, stiff and rigid before her transformation, are free-flowing once she falls through the laundry machine looking-glass, conveying an embrace of what’s on the horizon. The fox, embodying intuition, is adrift and often hidden to Martha before becoming her constant companion during her escape. Read as a metaphor, each small detail seems to find new meaning.

The experience of intuition is a funny thing – enigmatic by its very nature. When it’s within your grasp, it can feel like a clear, confident internal voice. But to scrutinise it can be to quiet it and, once subdued, it can be drowned out by the static of second-guesses, anxieties and uncertainties, disintegrating even further with any mental attempt to recover it. Yet Jacobs and Gillian, perhaps informed by their own experiences, seem to suggest a means of reclaiming trust in your gut via escaping routine, tackling an adventure and, through this, regaining perspective and confidence. In doing so, Your Mountain Is Waiting offers a gentle nudge towards embracing the what’s to come – all while offering up some exquisite moving images.

Written by Adam D’Arpino

Director: Hannah Jacobs

Writer: Harriet Gillian

Producer: Zoe Muslim

Website: Strange Beast

23 FEBRUARY 2022

Your mountain is waiting | Psyche Films

 

A musician and a storyteller collaborate in a daily duet of words and music (an Aeon video)

‘There was once a man, so old that most of his family and all his friends had left this world before him…’

In 2013, the Scottish author and poet James Robertson wrote a story every day for a year, each one 365 words long. These stories – drawing on everything from ancient myth and Scottish folklore to personal dreams and memories – were published a year later in the anthology 365 Stories. Inspired by this endeavour, the Scottish musician Aidan O’Rourke wrote 365 melodies, each of them corresponding to a different work from Robertson’s collection. In this video, Robertson, O’Rourke and the English jazz pianist Kit Downes combine their crafts in an intimate and unique performance. As Robertson reads from his short story ‘Imagination’ about an elderly man lost in memories of war, O’Rourke and Downes accompany him with a wistful score of string and harmonium inspired by the work. Through this cross-form collaboration emerges a stirring reflection on ageing, memory and trauma that illustrates the many ways art can evoke emotion.

Kit Downes will be appearing at the UK launch of the Sophia Club – the new international series of cultural events from Aeon Media – on Tuesday 26 April in London. To book tickets for this event, click here.

Director: James Ewen

Website: Folk Radio UK

29 March 2022

A musician and a storyteller collaborate in a daily duet of words and music | Aeon Videos

 

 

My Enemy, My Brother (by Ann Shin)

How two enemy soldiers saved each other’s lives decades – and continents – apart

The Iran-Iraq War was a brutal conflict, raging for nearly nine years between 1980 and 1988, and killing hundreds of thousands – including child soldiers. The Canadian director Ann Shin finds fragments of hope in the war’s ashes, tracing the remarkable and deeply moving true story of two soldiers who fought on opposing sides and forged a powerful, decades-long bond through mercy, compassion and sheer coincidence. My Enemy, My Brother was one of the most critically acclaimed short documentaries of 2015, screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Hot Docs Festival and Sheffield Doc/Fest, among others.

Director: Ann Shin

Website: My Enemy, My Brother

2 August 2016

How two enemy soldiers saved each other’s lives decades – and continents – apart | Aeon Videos

 

 

"There is a story from the Desert Fathers where an Abba says to a seeker, 'Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.' This can be easier said than done since we are inclined to so many comforts that only serve to numb and distract us from life."

How often do you try to satisfy yourself with that which depletes you?

 

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, The Wisdom of the Body: A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women

 

Monk Manifesto (by Abbey of the Arts)

 

Monk: from the Greek monachos meaning single or solitary, a monk in the world does not live apart but immersed in the everyday with a single-hearted and undivided presence, always striving for greater wholeness and integrity

Manifesto: from the Latin for clear, means a public declaration of principles and intentions.

Monk Manifesto: A public expression of your commitment to live a compassionate, contemplative, and creative life.

1. I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation.
2. I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.
3. I commit to cultivating community by finding kindred spirits along the path, soul friends with whom I can share my deepest longings, and mentors who can offer guidance and wisdom for the journey.
4. I commit to cultivating awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish.
5. I commit to bringing myself fully present to the work I do, whether paid or unpaid, holding a heart of gratitude for the ability to express my gifts in the world in meaningful ways.
6. I commit to rhythms of rest and renewal through the regular practice of Sabbath and resist a culture of busyness that measures my worth by what I do.
7. I commit to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations.
8. I commit to being a dancing monk, cultivating creative joy and letting my body and “heart overflow with the inexpressible delights of love.”*

*quote is from the Prologue of the Rule of Benedict

Monk Manifesto | Abbey of the Arts

 

Erroll Garner plays Misty