Herbaria

In one playful passage in the film, a little girl tells a story that begins with a killer plant and culminates in the end of the world. At another point, the German filmmaker Narcisa Hirsch meditates on the idea of extinction in her house in Bariloche, Argentina. Director Leandro Listorti knows all too well that species disappear, and that the dramatic reduction of biological species since the mid-nineteenth century is scandalous. But not only do species die, but also films and even the knowledge surrounding their projection and conservation. Drawing a legitimate parallel between the two, Listorti uses testimonies from botanists and people linked to cinematheques and museums, juxtaposing scientific (and other) films with nineteenth-century systems of species conservation, supplementing them with information on the state of the existence of the worlds of plants and of images when relevant.
A lucid treatise on extinction, the film lacks neither humor nor beauty. The number of unforgettable shots of flowers is irrefutable proof of the pleasure that cinema can lavish upon us and of its direct relationship with knowledge, a pleasure that flowers produce due to their paradoxical way of invoking both life and death, as alluded to in the epilogue with elegance and precision. (Roger Koza)

In the presence of Leandro Listorti.

Leandro Listorti: DEAD YOUTH (2010), FRESNO (2014, K), LA PELÍCULA INFINITA (2018), PETIT DAGUERRE (2018, K)