Physical Culture

Shot in the pine forests and sand dunes of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, Eglė Budvytytė’s Songs from the Compost is a poetic and hypnotic exploration of nonhuman forms of consciousness and different dimensions of symbiotic life in the forest: interdependence, surrender, dying and decay.  The life cycles of the forest offer an alternative vision: here, when things die, they break down and merge into the earth to be reabsorbed by other living forms, like moss, mushrooms, insects and bacteria.

Featuring solo performances by choreographer Mami Kang, the film's song lyrics draw on the work and words of biologist Lynn Margulis, celebrating the role of bacteria in making life and the collaboration between the single-cell organisms possible, as well as concepts by the science-fiction author Octavia Butler, who employed tropes of symbiosis, mutation and hybridity to challenge hierarchies and categorisation.

EPHÉMEROS (short-lived / transitory in Ancient Greek) is a dance film that subtly relates human, plant and sculpture to create a unique world of fantasies. An ephemeral creature sacrifices itself so it can live again in the circle of life. The temporality of existence in this world becomes inescapably tangible in the face of eternity.

As they move through the dunes, a group of dancers fall and then get up again. Lemniscate is an exploration of the inevitability and necessity of falling and standing up again in everyday life.