Kaltes Tal
a film by Florian Fischer and Johannes Krell
The film gives a dialectical treatment of our relationship to nature as a warehouse for materials and mystical space of possibilities.
Festivals
2016 | German Short Film Prize (Gold)
2016 | 16. European short film festival in Nice (France)
2016 | ASFF
2016 | Stuttgarter Filmwinter | International Competition
2016 | Clermont-Ferrand | Special Mention de Jury
2016 | IFFR Rotterdam | Forces of Nature
2016 | KurzFilm Festival Köln
2016 | Regensburger Kurzfilmwoche
2016 | Filmfest Dresden
2017 | Mecal International Short Film Film Festival Barcelona
2017 | LES RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES
2017 | Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
2017 | 14. Kurzfilmfestival KURZSUECHTIG | Jury- & Audienceaward
2017 | Tabakalera in San Sebastián (Spain)
2017 | 23th Nancy International Film Festival | Winner Sélection Labo
2017 | Ekofilm, Prague
2017 | Environmental Film Festival Australia
2017 | 3. KLAPPE AUF! Short Film Festival Hamburg
2017 | 34. Internationalen Kurzfilmfestival Hamburg | German Competition
2017 | 53. INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL CHICAGO
2017 | 10th Imagine Science Film Festival | Visual Science Award
2017 | 3.KLAPPE AUF - Kurzfilmfestival Hamburg | Jurypreis
Sponsored by
Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung GmbH
Kunststiftung Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Supported by
Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V.
Hochschule Harz
SYNOPSIS
In a strip mine detonations are carried out for harvesting lime. In this way, we observe how the raw material is uncovered and processed. At the end of the production cycle is the return of the harvested lime dust in a forest liming. Acid rain is the origin of the forest damage. Lime, an alkaline material, is used to counteract the acidosis of the forest soil. The narrative constructs an absorbed, but authentic cycle to counteract the irreversible consequences, including the mining of raw materials.
Forest liming is an unavoidable reaction to the consequence of air pollution, unleashed by exhaust and carbon, arising from things including industrial production. Humans try to even out their intervention and in doing so, unleashed an irreversible process. The fragility of nature and the role of humans in the Anthropocene age dictates the narrative discourse.
We slide into a foggy cloud of lime and leave the rational framework of the film. A white forest landscape is revealed, depicting a dreamlike alternative world already shown. The color white is drawn through all parts of the film as a formal element.
It evokes associations of purity and invisibility, but in the film it experiences an ambivalent meaning because it gives the forest landscape with an odd, sterile touch.
Floating and distanced, we encounter this low-contact world, which doesn’t give us a glance and appears motionless in its monochromatic aesthetic. A feeling of estrangement foists itself on a previously archaic nature.
FACTS
Genre: Experimental documentary film
Running time: 12 Min.
Format: 1.85:1, DCP, Color
Sound: Stereo, 5.1
Produced in: Germany
Completed in:October, 2016