Terra que marca

For such a wordless film, it’s strange that TERRA QUE MARCA begins with words, although perhaps the idea is to reference their very insufficiency: “It is told that two wrongdoers came to serve their sentence by taking care of this land.” The film will not follow their story, but rather that of the land, although few stories dispense with standard structures to such ravishing effect. Survey or exploration might be better epithets, although they imply rigidity and empiricism when fluidity and digression are the order of the day.
The camera simply scours the earth and observes all the processes it sees there, with gentleness, patience, calm: the picks that break up the soil, the slurry sprayed over it, the water channeled over its surface, the plants that push their way up through the sods, the hands that pick up the potatoes from the ground. On Mini-DV, everything looks at once closer and further away, the light, the textures, the colors, the dark. Not everything is idyllic here though, as soil can also be covered by concrete, trees can be felled, and when fire rages over earth, it doesn’t always stop. If the earth does indeed leave marks, on hands, hooves and bodies alike, each mark made in it carries its own weight in turn. (James Lattimer)

In the presence of Raúl Domingues and Ico Costa (Production).

Raúl Domingues: ALICE E DARLENE (2013, K), FLOR AZUL (2014)