Babbler, Fairy and Thrush

Karel Doing / United Kingdom / 2022 / European Premiere / 3 min.

synopsis

According to the philosopher William James, for a child, the world is “one great blooming, buzzing confusion”. In the film, shot among the plants around the filmmaker's house, the distinctions between detail and whole, near and far, outer and inner are blurred, as if the stream of perception does not yet want to settle into one perspective. The soundtrack consists of other manifestations of the abundance of life, including the babbling of children.

“The way I do my experiments is that I develop a social relationship with the plant.”

Quote source: into the mothlight podcast.

biography

Experimental filmmaker and researcher Karel Doing (born 1965) studied fine arts at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem, the Netherlands. During his doctoral studies at the University of the Arts London, he invented 'phytography', a technique that uses the chemical reactions of plants to produce film. He currently lives in Oxford, where he has built a phytography lab in his garden. His films Liquidator (2011), Dark Matter (2014) and Energy Energy (2022) have been screened at Jihlava IDFF.