As an audience member of Viktor Kossakovsky’s films, you are never given a menu in advance. Kossakovsky chooses a subject and seductively transforms it into a relevant topic for modern society. If you have seen any of Kossakovsky’s twelve feature films, you know the menu will be a poetic cinematic feast for eyes, soul, and brain.
Michele de Lucchi
This time, Kossakovsky focuses on stones in a beautiful visual way. Mountains, ruins, formations and temples. But dust, gravel pits, abandoned cities and stone crushers draw my attention to how our civilisation has chosen to live. It takes time, and I am still curious about where Kossakovsky is taking me with these breathtaking images and very few comments. At the moment, it is hard not to be fascinated by Evgueni Galperine’s compositions throughout the film, which are mixed with the sound from explosions, trucks, and other natural sounds. It is amazing to experience when one and one become three.
Kossakovsky has involved the Italian architect and designer Michele de Lucchi, but first, we observe him planning a circle in his garden. Two workers are helping to dig a layer of stones into the grass, which is now being transformed into a circle. It is a magic circle, says de Lucchi, which only horses and dogs are allowed to enter.
«People knew how to make buildings that lasted a thousand years, and we make buildings that last 40 years – ugly, bland buildings.»
Kossakovsky himself enters the architect’s garden to discuss the consequences of human exploitation of the planet’s resources and the architect’s view on the possible/hopeful paradigm shift in the future. Not in the circle, of course, but leaning against a tree next to the bench where de Lucchi sits. This is a part I like very much, especially when observing and listening to their conversation. Kossakovsky: People knew how to make buildings that lasted a thousand years, and we make buildings that last 40 years – ugly, bland buildings.
I love that part. It is clear that they respect each other and are, therefore, very honest. De Lucchi criticises a concrete skyscraper he is creating in Milan. He is even ashamed of it, he points out. De Lucchi: There is a famous phrase that says when we design something, we do not design only products, buildings, or spaces, but we design the behaviour of people.
Thank you, Kossakovsky, for pointing out (once again) what we humans are doing to the planet Earth and to ourselves.
Exploiting resources
This is far from the first time that Kossakovsky’s films have dealt with the Earth’s resources and how mankind exploits them. In 2018, he created the film Aquarela, where water is the main character. In 2020 came the film Gunda. Gunda, the sow, is the main character in this black-and-white film, showing that animals have language and emotions and that humans have lost the attention and ability to understand those who are usually industrially farmed and end up on the dinner table.
If you can see any of the films in a cinema, do so. You and the film deserve it.
