With Aequador, a fictional journey through an uncertain territory where elements that were not meant to meet overlap, Laura Huertas Millán continues his reflexion already at work in her previous creations: nature as a place where otherness emerges, the question of the foreigner and strangeness, the hybridation of stories from different origins. In her Voyage En La Terre Autrement Dite, which constitutes the other part of this series, the film's premise was somewhat reversed: the reconstructed nature under glass, unfolded the heart of Lille's equatorial greenhouse and gave birth to a vegetal fiction populated by mysterious figures, while Aequador grafts 3D-modelled rationalist architecture from Eastern Europe's bygone era onto the natural backdrop of the Amazon rainforest.
The intrusion of computer-generated imagery does not discredit the documentary views of agricultural fields or virgin forest; rather, it insinuates doubt and shifts the stakes, without allowing them to coexist. Like Thomas More's Amaurote, Aequador is one of those "placeless" sites and "chronology-less histories" (Foucault) that are characteristic of utopias. Indeed, this fragmentary exploration in the form of a drift takes place in an area that happens to be the Colombian Amazon, but which we are unable to date or locate precisely, as the filmmaker blurs the existing topography in order to carve out her own space. The sound work also tends to de-realise the ethnographic or anthropological images of the shoot, in order to serve the writing of a parallel present. The critique of an existing order, as is customary in utopian narratives, is also slightly off-centre: while it evokes "civilisation" projects in Latin America or the planned retreat of the rainforest, it ultimately lingers, from the fluctuating vantage point of a boat, on the relationship between bodies and architecture (both virtual and real) in a territory where nature remains, or could remain, sovereign.
_ Anne Marquez
3 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION
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distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
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version
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French version |
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screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
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speed |
25 fps |
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sound |
sound |
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rental fee |
84,00 € |
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distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|
version
|
English version |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
rental fee |
84,00 € |
|
distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|
version
|
Spanish version |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
rental fee |
84,00 € |
