QUICK EDIT TEASER WORK-IN-PROGRESS (2025)
FORAGING AS A CINEMATIC METAPHOR FOR CULTURAL MEMORY
It started with a ludicrous question: "what would a film look like if it was entirely directed by plants?" Not about plants — by them.
Plants are the scaffolding of most ecosystems. They carry myths, rituals, ancestral knowledge. This led
@tengal and
@elvinbrandhi to Siquijor, Philippines — an island known for its pre-colonial shamanistic traditions and the deep knowledge of foraging.
Over three weeks, the team composed of Tengal, Elvin Brandhi and filmmakers Jules Leaño and Jippy Pascua joined forest forages, herbalist rituals, and communal hangouts with local healers — observing from within, not at a distance. The result is an experimental documentary following the ritual foraging practices of traditional healers during Holy Week: a spiritual alloy of Catholicism and pre-colonial cosmology, centered on plants as co-authors rather than human protagonists.
Techniques included field recordings, phytochemical film processing, and phytograms — a cameraless process where plants expose their chemical signatures directly onto film. The plant becomes both subject and author.
The artists call this a "moving image topography" — a living archive mapping biodiversity loss and cultural memory. Foraging, as both method and metaphor: an excavation of forgotten epistemologies, endangered methodologies, and our relationships to place.
#foragefriction #experimentalfilm
