Flowers

An Amazon ethnocide is justified by war in Ukraine. All streamed on-line under the gaze of the filmmaker, he leaves the screen and meets his 3-year-old son who marvels at the flowers growing in the garden.

When my son was born, I understood that it was a time when I could no longer go out and shoot a film. But at the same time, what mattered most to me was my son. Without intending to, I filmed many moments that I shared with him and his mother. In this season of confinement, which became even more isolated with the quarantine of the COVID 19 pandemic. I stopped meditating in group, a habit I had until this time, and tried to do it alone. I looked for inspiration in teachers who were filmed, and their teachings were recorded in videos that today are posted on YouTube. I grew up with the habit of watching and listening to the news since I come from a family of journalists. I felt that we were living in a time when the news was getting more intense in several ways and I was moved by it. While the world was announcing itself in agony, I was accompanying the beginning of a new life. How to keep hope? How not to become pessimistic about the future? How to live in the present? I discovered that my way of traveling during this static period was to return to so much filmed material that I had made without a clear motive. I started with the most recent recordings from my camera and went backward, mostly videos of my son portrayed perceiving the world with wonder. My computer automatically mixed my videos and photos with captures, videos for unclear reasons I felt like downloading from my daily internet surfing. Among this material, I found a video of the Buddhist monk Thích Nh?t H?nh. I became very interested when I realized that I could deeply perceive Thích Nh?t H?nh’s presence in some videos freely circulating on YouTube. I started selecting fragments that touched me from this material, regardless of the source or context. I began playing with these possibilities without knowing that it would lead me to find a web of connections, some more obvious and others almost unconscious, but, to my perception, equally felt. Complete here: https://jirafica.com/flores/