double bill #34

From the banks of the Meuse in Boxmeer to national parks in Bolivia and the United States: both films in this double bill are calm observations of groups of people that leave the verbal aside. Still, they do not deliver silence, but rather a heightened sensitivity.

Joke Liberge’s Meander focuses on a small group of teenagers by the water’s edge. Their body language reveals subtle group dynamics. The film appeals directly to sensory, almost universal memories: a splash in the water on a hot summer’s day, sitting on a hard jetty, the salt of fries on your tongue, and how clearly you suddenly hear your body when you submerge yourself head-deep under water.

Luciana Decker Orozco’s Language of the Entrails takes a step into the avant-garde in order to descend further into these depths. Geological caves function as reflections of bodily cavities. Here too, inner worlds are not separated from those around us, but take shape in collective eating and being together.

With a different visual language, twenty years apart, and more than an ocean between them, these two filmmakers share a similar attentiveness to sounds, textures, and other sensations that often remain in the background of our consciousness. Both embody a double movement: outward, toward the sensory world around us, and inward, toward what lies within our shared depths.