From Nicole Kidman’s BDSM adventures to a pastoral docudrama by French twin directors Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, here are five films to keep an eye out for this year
With the exponential rise of digital technologies, our intrinsic ties to the natural world have become increasingly fragile. The boundaries between the human and nonhuman are being reconfigured. While science has for centuries organized and rationalized matter and beings by creating taxonomies, boundaries, and classifications, a fundamental shift happened with the development of what was coined the “quantum theory.” This scientific proposition reveals that nature is indivisible. The three films grouped together form the inaugural chapter of All that Weaves the Universe. Together, they introduce the idea of Quantum entanglements, and explain how, while this development is dated to 1900, the ideas it expands upon have been thought through and put into practice by generations of elders, for centuries prior.
Artists Josèfa Ntjam, Simon Speiser, and Tabita Rezaire navigate these ideas pulling threads. To quote South African philosopher Rutendo Ngara: “The subatomic level of quantum physics has shown that we live in a participatory universe – one of relativity of space and time – one in which all things are inter-connected. Particles are at once destructible and indestructible; matter is both continuous and discontinuous. (...) The cutting-edge science is finally catching up to eons of indigenous wisdom.”
Frieze Film Seoul 2024 Artists:
Simon Speiser, Naufragio Liberador (Liberating Shipwreck), 2024, 15 min