Oryza Sativa
I have kept some pictures from a recent trip to Indonesia and I
assembled a video that tells of gods, prayers, demons, men and
universes.
The location is a rice field.
The rice I understood as a metaphor of the cosmos, where the multitude
of grains could represent the infinity of stars and planets.
This Cosmos / paddy is animated from the air. The wind is the energy
that drives the scarecrow windvanes .
The propeller drives the beating of a stick over a jar drum and the
rhythmic sound that it produces chases the birds away from the
ripening rice, but at the same time will turn away the demons that may
curse the crop.
The windvane will sound and, in its perennial turning, emit a prayer:
a dialogue between the machine and the guardian gods of the rice
paddy.
For the duration of a few fleeting frames, I wanted to highlight the
holy trinity of Shiva, the universal spirit of Hinduism: hence the
propeller has tripled in Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. It is like a brief
mystical apparition; its purpose it to define the surreality of the
time and space in that setting.
In the wind, which animates the sound and prayer among the rice
plants, there are twelve peasants. They are immobile because they live
in another time reference; they surround the setting as planets ,
because they are like deities of that same pantheon which oversees the
boundless cosmos / rice paddy.
This short film is a record of a particular trip to a place far from
our West. That same machine which can play or pray for the paddy, I
have taken back with me. I have chosen for it a sacred space. I placed
it in a church which is the only possible sacred setting for us
Westerners. I think that, regardless of the differences in the
atmosphere, the machine continues to play and pray at our latitudes.
directed and shot by Davide Sebastian
music by: Federico Ferretti - DJ Stile
editing by: Emanuele Sabetta
location manager: I Kadek Adi Sucita
special thanks to the rice-paddy workers of Uma Carik, Denpasar, Bali
format: Full HD 1920x1080
duration: 3 min 46 sec
