Leandro Listorti
Argentina, Germany | 2022 | 83 min
World premiere
Languages : Spanish, German
Subtitles : English, French
In his second feature film, Leandro Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate cinematographic work, full of beautiful images—both archival and current—gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about forms of representation and memory.
In his second feature film, Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate work, full of beautiful film images – both archival and current – gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about the forms of representation and memory. Both worlds – which, in Argentina, are related to the surname Hicken (the first one, Cristobal Hicken, founded the Darwinion Institute of Botany; his nephew, Pablo, was the founder of the Cinema Museum) – meet on the basis of common practices: identification of materials, conservation, restoration, access. Listorti carefully describes the activities of preservation work, which are slow, meticulous and precious, like those of a medieval miniaturist, and which seem to somehow go against the grain of the present time, as if they were a silent and stoic form of resistance to globalised immediacy. From its very conception, the careful selection of the astonishing archive material, as well as the decision to shoot in 16mm colour film, shows the coherence and honesty of a proposal that easily integrates into the universe it describes. Herbaria is thus a visual and sound pleasure, a film of a strange beauty that seems outside of time, yet belongs fully to the time of cinema.
Violeta Bava
La película infinita, 2018
Death Youth, 2010