Février

A boy and his grandfather tend a flock of sheep somewhere in central Bulgaria. The old man doesn’t talk much, so Petar is frequently left to his own devices. An old sheepfold becomes a site of wonder for him, as it contains a statue who purpose is now long forgotten. Did it belong to somebody who was once rich? Kamen Kalev’s FEBRUARY is a very much handmade film and decidedly poetic. He directed, wrote, edited, and acted as cinematographer. Often the humans are just dots in a stunningly layered open range landscape beneath a vast sky. Kalev divides his film into three chapters that correspond, as it turns out, to three stages in Petar’s life. In chapter 1 (past) he is 8 years old, in chapter 2 (military) he is 18, gets married and serves on a barren yet beautiful island. The third chapter is called “February”, Petar is now 82. National history dissolves into something bigger: a view of life as a mysterious continuity of “incarnations”, with the patterns on old women’s skirts as a metaphor for a connectedness beyond individuality and ancestry. (Bert Rebhandl)

Kamen Kalev: ORPHÉE (2003, K), GET THE RABBIT BACK (2005, K), RABBIT TROUBLES (2007, K), IZTOCHNI PIESI (2009), THE ISLAND (2011), PONTS DE SARAJEVO (2014, EPISODE), TÊTE BAISSÉE (2015)