This week’s selection consists of three films in which the act of walking is key. Walking is a way of inhabiting the landscape, of appropriating it. Very slowly, by the rhythm of each footstep, the landscape transforms itself. The national myth of the United States is connected to a slow conquest of the land by people on foot. With only their bodies as means of transportation, they embodied the uninhabited land. In these three films, characters are one way or the other bound to walk, leaving the old behind but above all in search of something familiar.
Victoria (Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere, 2020)
The new film by Belgian filmmakers Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere and Sofie Benoot was supposed to have a cinema release, but unfortunately it got cancelled due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Luckily it is now possible to watch the film at home via the online film platforms ZED vanuit je zetel, Cinema@Home and Cinema Bij Je Thuis. Victoria features Lashay T. Warren, a young man who moved from Los Angeles to California City. This desert-city was designed in the fifties to become the second mayor city in the state, but its construction was never finished. Today, few people live amidst thousands of streets that cross the desolate space of the desert. Lashay wanders the empty roads, and by his itineraries he is linked to the pioneers who arrived some 150 years ago by foot.
Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
It is 1845 and three couples of settlers are walking westwards, guided by Stephen Meek, a cowboy-like mountain man. The film starts at the moment the group is already suspecting the cut-off has led them astray. As water is running out, they walk in silence through the empty land, until they meet and capture a native. As they take him along, hoping he could lead them to water, it becomes visible how the pioneers are venturing though the desert completely alien to them. To them, the land is untouched and unhuman, otherworldly. The Indian moves at a different stance, with a familiarity to the landscape that puzzles them. One at a time, they leave behind their inherited furniture to get rid of its dead weight. The colonists are walking into the open, guided by the unknown. You can rent the film on iTunes.
Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002)
After a lazy car drive, two friends jokingly follow the beaten track of a National Park, until they decide to wander off, taking a detour away from the crowd. But the landscape is unpredictable and soon their perseveration turns into alienation when they discover they are walking in circles. The two friends initially walk in rhythm, but slowly their walking becomes lagged, out of tune with each other but evolving into a musical and cinematic reading of space and time. Gus Van Sant presents a palette of variations of walking, transforming physical and mental spaces. You can rent the film on iTunes.
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