Dane Komljen’s previous film, Afterwater (2022), was a three-part movie that explores the limits of gender and environmental relationships in humanity. It starts with an observation section which is serene but follows a couple who work in a lab and then go to a lake; it continues by freely adapting the text of a Spanish novel; and concludes with an abstract science fiction sequence that imagines the dissolution of binary systems between gender and civilization-nature in some possible future.
In this sense, The Garden Cadences can be seen as responding to the speculative question raised by the last part of that earlier film. It is technically a documentary about lives lived communally in a queer feminist collective called the Mollies, set in a trailer park on the outskirts of Berlin. They have been there for ten years, and this is their final summer before being evicted to make way for an aquarium; construction has already begun.
At first glance it looks like it might belong with some works from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab given its use slow cinema, avant-garde borrowings, varied camera equipment used immersively to document its subject matter.
However whereas the SEL films take up documentary filmmaking as experiential expansion so as to increase vocabulary or understanding around certain topics through experience itself rather than mere description/depiction alone etc., here Komljen makes no such distinction between documentary/fiction narrative/abstraction using all these forms interchangeably depending on his needs or desires related both thematically as well formally toward what he wants convey/show us about things world life knowledge etc.
Indeed one theme among others constructed within boundaries identity which are temporal themselves could also be said represented throughout The Garden Cadences namely their dissolution. The humans we see are mostly not named or even described beyond any necessary reference points required for understanding story context etc.
Some shots show bodies tangled up together while others highlight flowers growing over everything else around them; some lines spoken refer either directly or indirectly through astrology towards how nature influences human beings’ lives while others talk about place’s transitory fluidness when individuals move themselves from one location another without ever having permanent residence anywhere particular etc.
But perhaps most unforgettable sequence consists mainly out of focus close ups flowers whose shapes colors change slowly as camera moves closer further away or vice versa behind bushes thus creating different forms over time.
In contrast with Afterwater’s future scenario, these events will come to pass. Cranes can be seen in many shots along with sounds made by construction always present but never clear enough reveal what exactly being built where; this serves only heighten atmosphere tension surrounding Mollies’ situation since it seems like everything around them wants disrupt fragile utopia they have managed build for themselves so far. They were trying imagine better world but logic capitalism does not allow such things exist except temporarily and under certain conditions alone.
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