Water and Salt

Day and night, a giant sits on a hill, far away from his smaller fellow man. He fills his days organising things and making sure everything is in the right place at the right time.

Martí arrives in Bilbao for an artistic residency. In his new room, his clothes occupy only a small portion of the enormous wardrobe. But when he meets someone, the wardrobe slowly begins to fill up. Where has the emptiness gone, the free space, the little corner that was his?

The thaw of the so-called eternal snow of Páramo, a neotropical alpine ecosystem in the high Andes, exposes a layer of meaning about the origins and survival of the landscape.

Oman’s vast plains look so much like Mars that they are used as a training ground for astronauts. Two local girls gaze at the starry sky like curious scientists while the astronauts philosophise about living on the Red Planet.

Pierre, 25 years old and on a scholarship for a prestigious Parisian university, is lodged by Francine, who is 75, disabled, and confined to her wheelchair. Both puzzled and disoriented, they witness the French presidential elections of 2017 play out.

Every form of communication involves deciphering codes. In Before Then, Mengzhu Xue attempts to confess a secret in the form of a letter in English, which she writes out phonetically in Chinese, and asks her grandmother to read out loud.

In what one could call Jonas Mekas’ first video blog, the Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker reflects on his life and the art of cinema and representation.