Less is More 2005

Three of our favourite filmmakers dig deep in films of limited duration and modest resources. A very gratifying programme indeed, and refreshment for the long-distance Festival-goer. Victor Kossakovsky’s (Tishe!) sublimely simple Svyato records two-year-old Svyatoslav’s first encounter with a mirror, and documents something fundamentally true about human ‘self-cognition and loneliness’. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady) focuses on his own predilection for filming in the Thai rainforest jungle in Worldly Desires. By day, a young couple searches the jungle for a sacred tree; by night, a film crew shoots incongruously poppy song-and-dance routines. It’s an idiosyncratic and playful film about the mystery of being happy and in love. In Roads of Kiarostami the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami combines poetry, classical music and his own distinctive photography of roads. The camera follows paths on the still photographs and then opens up to the surroundings, questioning what means most to us: the path we take or the beauty that surrounds us on our journey?