Unstable Rocks

Bluesky

Ewelina Rosinska invites us to fall into the rhythms of, for the most part, rural Portugal with her latest short film. Her Bolex camera adds texture when she shoots in 16mm black and white and bright pops of colour when she switches the stock. Chief among her subjects are birds. Sometimes it's raptors gliding high in the sky, at others storks in their nests, their calls to one another creating a clatter. Humans are present too, though only on the fringes. One or two help birds in need, others are glimpsed from the side or back or with their faces cut off by the frame.

The edit – also by the director – picks out similarities, shafts of light falling in various places, a pumpkin yielding to a shot of rock painted in the exact same shade, which offers a backdrop to another flock of birds as they wheel about in front of it.

The colour elements prove all the more striking when in contrast to black and white. Rocks, suddenly revealed to have blooms of green lichen on them, or a snail whose glisten in the sunlight seems all the more intense in combination with fuzzier black and white shots of other insects. To what degree this is a meditation on human’s interaction with nature is largely up to the individual viewer, left to find our own story in between the animals doing what’s natural and people, who are also glimpsed at a christening, masks a reminder of the Covid era. Whatever you take away, this is a short that is shot with respect for its subjects and with a restful intent that pays dividends.