ENG_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Ori Gersht
Project Description

‘The forests … symbolize the place in which inner darkness is confronted and worked through; where uncertainty is resolved about who one is; and where one begins to understand who one wants to be.'
— Bruno Bettelheim

This major new film project, commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, continues Gersht's thoughtful journeys to places in which history has become embedded in the landscape. As in the series Being There (2001) — photographs taken in the contested areas of the Judea Desert between Israel and the West Bank — here Gersht visits what might be considered and archetypal landscape, the forest, and considers what traces of human history might be found within it.

The work will be filmed in the forest surrounding Kolomyia, in Ukraine , a remaining fragment of the once-vast primeval forest that covered much of continental Europe . The forest has been seen traditionally as a dark place, and a place of dark deeds, and this is certainly true of the forest around Kolomyia, which witnessed appalling atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis upon the local Jewish population. Amongst those caught up in these terrible events was Gersht's father-in-law, and his father and brother, and it is in this personal connection that can be found the genesis of this work.

In this haunting film, we find ourselves in a forest both captive and captivating. As our gaze slides slowly across the trees, the scene before us might almost be enchanted, mist rising and being illuminated by the morning sun. But this image of a sylvan idyll is rudely interrupted by the terrifying sound of twisting wood and the sight of a mature tree crashing to the ground; our view continues to turn, across trees in other places, across trees still standing and those that might fall, as if in an act of arborial suicide. What remains is a scene of destruction — although its cause remains invisible throughout.

This is a film of spare and tender beauty, born of horror, yet now bearing a potential for profound transformation. It is a film of still defiance also, as even after some trees have fallen, many more remain standing and, in the words of the poet Ruth Fainlight, ‘still assume / the attributes of judges, not victims'.

‘But who knows the temporal dimensions of the forest? History is not enough. We should have to know how the forest experiences its great age…'
— Gaston Bachelard

This major new work will be shot on 16mm film, transferred to DVD, and presented as a single-screen video projection; its duration is to be determined although it is expected to be between eight and ten minutes. It will consist of a number of simple, slow panning shots, executed using an automatic camera head that will ensure a smooth and constant motion. A number of shots will be taken in similar locations within an area of the forest and in many of these shots we will see the trees standing firm; however, in a few of them we may see a tree falling in the distance, or in close-up across the camera's view, or perhaps even hear its fall before seeing it, the camera panning to see the still-quivering branches of a recently-fallen tree. The constant pace of the camera's movement will create a series of elegant sweeps through the forest that can be edited together to create a piece that possesses an understated rhythm. Seemingly unaffected by what might occur before it, the camera's disinterested gaze creates both a sense of cool detachment and emotional engagement, a tension sustained by uncertainty.

CAST_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Grabado en el los bosques de Kolomyja, Ukrania, The Forest consiste de una serie de tomas, travellings elegantes y casi procesionales entre árboles de un denso bosque. Cada cierto tiempo algunos árboles caen misteriosamente, pero la cámara no se detiene para observarlos, sigue adelante y va cambiando su posición, hasta comenzar de nuevo. El sonido de cada caída, amplificado, sube y baja como un lamento visceral. Entre cada momento de estruendo y ruido, un silencio permite escuchar los sutiles sonidos del bosque y el canto los de pájaros, hasta que los árboles empiezan de nuevo su caída.

La obra se sitúa en un bosque en el que ocurrieron terribles atrocidades en la segunda guerra mundial, hechos que vivieron en carne propia el suegro, el padre y el hermano del propio artista. La pieza también encarna el tipo de vigilancia incesante, necesaria para que la historia no se repita. The Forest es una obra poderosa; indeleblemente inolvidable, combina una tristeza enorme con una fuerza sutil y rotunda. Para cada árbol que desaparece, muchos permanecen. Y, para cada árbol que se cae, hay un eco que reverbera en el tiempo.