By Mónica Delgado
Young Slovakian filmmaker Viera Cákanyová poses in Frem (Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2019), a different approach to the representation of territories almost devoid of human presence. In time where the resource of the drone is synonym of postcard-type shots or advertising kind-of-material, a film like this poses itself as an exploration of everything that the dispositive implies as an experimentation tool.
As if under the theoretical influence of Harvard’s Sensorey Ethnography Lab, the drone becomes an aseptic method to capture different territorial and geopolitical aspects of natural life in Antarctica. It is an ontological search of this natural space as a scientific enquiry of the human self almost out of field. Antarctica or the South Pole as a reflection of a whole alien world.
It’s inevitable that these images of an Antarctica in resistance are related with the dramatic visual effects of global warming, but this isn’t the purpose of Frem. This is a visual and sound experience about the textures of space, of this deserted and lunar landscape, that in moments achieves to awake certain terrifying atmospheres of physical destruction and spiritual loneliness.
Viera Cákanyová, who has been directing short and medium-length features, releases Frem, her second feature presented in Berlinale 2020 Forum, premiered at the Jihlava Festival. In Frem, she builds an idea of humanity without humans, of an inter- dimensional space plagued with irony, where there’s no space for the bucolic happiness or the National Geographic trademark. The lonely and forgotten Antarctica, back to life from a playful, satellite and vibrant eye. The eye of the creator?
Director: Viera Cákanyová
Czech Republic/Slovakia
73 min
2019