“One molecule could say yes to another molecule and life was born” –– talking with Deborah Stratman about Last Things (2023)
Deborah Stratman on Robin Wall Kimmerer: “She talked about grammar and how we would know the natural world so differently if we used a language unlike English, that’s so noun-heavy. We’re just thinking about these things as these inert bodies, but in other languages, they’re way more verb-prevalent. And so instead of ‘the tree’, ‘the lake’, it’s ‘to be a tree,’ ‘to be a lake.’ I want people to think the same way about minerals. Rocks are verbs, and we just don’t have the right sensory doors to see them that way. If language was framed in a different way, we probably… I don’t know if it would solve any problems, but it seems like it would be more egalitarian.”
I am thinking about...
Deborah Stratman on Robin Wall Kimmerer: “She talked about grammar and how we would know the natural world so differently if we used a language unlike English, that’s so noun-heavy. We’re just thinking about these things as these inert bodies, but in other languages, they’re way more verb-prevalent. And so instead of ‘the tree’, ‘the lake’, it’s ‘to be a tree,’ ‘to be a lake.’ I want people to think the same way about minerals. Rocks are verbs, and we just don’t have the right sensory doors to see them that way. If language was framed in a different way, we probably… I don’t know if it would solve any problems, but it seems like it would be more egalitarian.”
I am thinking about...
- 2/14/2024
- by Frank Falisi
- The Film Stage
Emerging on the international cinema scene with a trio of tender yet emotionally exacting features in Violet, Hellhole, and Ghost Tropic, Belgian director Bas Devos has turned a new leaf with Here. The Berlinale prizewinner is a moviegoing experience as gorgeous as it is tranquil, following Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian worker who begins forming connections with both nature and a bryologist named Shuxiu (Liyo Gong). The simplicity of the narrative is one of the film’s strong suits, Devos luxuriating in the gestures on display, from gifting soup to uncovering the ground beneath your feet.
I caught up with Devos at the U.S. premiere of Here at the 61st New York Film Festival, where we discussed the origins of the project, the film’s strong visual language, exuding a sense of compassion, the strange power of moss, and more. Ahead of the film’s theatrical run beginning this...
I caught up with Devos at the U.S. premiere of Here at the 61st New York Film Festival, where we discussed the origins of the project, the film’s strong visual language, exuding a sense of compassion, the strange power of moss, and more. Ahead of the film’s theatrical run beginning this...
- 2/8/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Here. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring. —Gwendolyn Brooks, “To the Young Who Want to Die”Cynicism has no place in Bas Devos’s Here (2023), a meshwork of small utopias in which the most urgent problem, on the surface of things, is the prospect of some vegetables going to waste. Set in Brussels, the nominal center of the European Union, this hopeful film takes shelter from present political crises and follows two placid characters, a first-generation Romanian migrant and a second-generation Chinese Belgian academic, whose narratives of minor events entwine in two chance encounters. They take cover from the rain with each other. They cross paths on wooded trails.If the deictic of the title—that lovely, laconic “here”—signals a stance of presence, then it is a stance...
- 2/5/2024
- MUBI
The back of Camila Cabello's neck will never be the same, but in a good way. On Sunday, Nov. 7, the 24-year-old "Never Be the Same" vocalist shared a photo to Instagram of the tattoo she got over the weekend. In her post's caption, Camila wrote that tattoo artist Kane Navasard's body art, located on the back of the star's neck, was inspired by botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's 2013 nonfiction book Braiding Sweetgrass. Camila's message included a line attributed to the book that read, "The word ecology is derived from the Greek word 'oikos,' the word for home." The Fifth Harmony star continued, "This book on Indigenous wisdom and...
- 11/8/2021
- E! Online
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