TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FÅGLAR OCH ORM
(DRAGONFLIES WITH BIRDS AND SNAKE)
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/63147538
The whole film: https://kinoscope.org/v/dragonflies-with-birds-and-snake/
Distribution:
Arsenal Institute for film and video art, Berlin / Germany
http://films.arsenal-berlin.de/index.php/Search/Index?search=entity%3AWolfgang+Lehmann
Light Cone, Paris / France
https://lightcone.org/en/film-8531-dragonflies-with-birds-and-snake
FILMFORM – The art film & videoarchive, Stockholm / Sweden
https://www.filmform.com/works/4181-trollslandor-med-faglar-och-orm/
A film by Wolfgang Lehmann
60 min., colour and b/w, Aspect ratio: 4:3, 16mm/Digi Beta
Germany / Sweden 2012
World premiere: 18. February 2012 - 62. International Film Festival Berlin (Berlinale) section Forum Expanded, Berlin / Germany
Festival invitations (selection):
62. International Film Festival Berlin (Berlinale) section Forum Expanded, Berlin / Germany
50th New York Film Festival (16th Views from the Avant Garde) , New York City / USA
17th Split Film Festival / International Festival of New Film - Frame Extended, Split / Croatia
24th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Chicago / USA
14th BAFICI, Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival “Competition Cine del Futuro”, Buenos Aires / Argentina
Underdox - 8th International Film Festival for Document and Experiment, München / Germany
“Mostra Multiolhares - Anti”, Museu Oscar Niemeyer / Olhar de Cinema; Curitiba / Brazil
19th Bradford International Film Festival, Bradford / Great Britain
37th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), Hong Kong / Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China
AGE D'OR FESTIVAL “Competition Age d´Or” - CINEMATEK (Royal Film Archive), Brussels / Belgium
3. Videoforma, Center of Contemporary Art ”Kuryokhin Center”, St. Petersburg / Russia (November)
Curtas Vila do Conde; special section Stereo, Vila do Conde / Portugal
The film is soundless in the original version.
Music interpretations:
2014
1. With live music by Wildbirds & Peacedrums (SE). Jazzhouse, CPH: DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival - AUDIO: VISUALS, Copenhagen / Denmark.
2015
2. With live electronic music by Isak Edberg & Marcus Pal (SE). WORM, Rotterdam / Netherlands.
2018
3. With live accompany by an experimental choir CoroDelantal with original music by the composer Sonia Megias (ES). La Puerta Azul Madrid / Spain.
-
4.With live music by Black Bombaim together with sound artist João Pais Filipe (PL). 26th Curta
Vila do Conte / Portugal.
-
5.With live music by Black Bombaim together with sound artist João Pais Filipe (PL).
Clube Fenianos Portuenses, Porto / Portugal
2019
6.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). Resonanzraum Hamburg / Germany.
Concert Trailer: https://vimeo.com/355401532
With live music by Felix Kubin (D). MIT Theater Arts W97, Cambridge, Massachusetts / USA
2020
7.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). Silent Green, Kulturquartier, Berlin / Germany.
2021
8.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). reihe M - Open Air, Cologne / Germany
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9.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). Santarcangelo Festival, Santarcangelo di Romagna / Italy.
10.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). Garage Cinema, Garage Museum, Moscow / Russia
11.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). TransCentury Update, UT Connewitz, Leipzig / Germany, discontinued because of COVID-19
12.With live accompany by an experimental choir CoroDelantal with original music by the composer Sonia Megias (ES). Contemporary Art Museum of Alicante (MACA), Alicante / Spain
-
13.With live music by Felix Kubin (D). City 46, Bremen / Germany
2024
14. With live music by Felix Kubin (D). NNOI Festival, Uckermark / Germany
SYNOPSIS
TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FÅGLAR OCH ORM is documentation and a meditation, a pure visual space of vibrant images and a travel in a world we never have a chance to “come in to”.
The title says it all; the work is an imaginative world of insects consisting of images, combined with birds, as there are toads and snakes to see. The theme is the eternal cycle of life, birth, sex and death. The structure of the film images is constant change.
TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FÅGLAR OCH ORM is a composition of images and contains of many frames of 16 mm film. Some images are self-recorded, others are taken from scientific film material and combining the images like in a collage, TROLLSLÄNDOR MED FÅGLAR OCH ORM examines the mysterial grey zone of image and imagination.
The film has no text, no sound – it is only visual!
Wolfgang Lehmann
“Nature never looked so alive yet mechanical in this highly recommended rhapsody of critters moving at the speed of camera and projector shutters.” Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun Times, 20 June 2012
”Who needs drugs when there are films like this? "Dragonflies with Birds and Snake" by Wolfgang Lehmann”, Leonardo Solaas, Buenos Aires on twitter.com 9th April.
“Weaving together short, colorful bursts of zoological and educational footage of insects, birds, and amphibians, Wolfgang Lehmann's feature-length film DRAGONFLIES WITH BIRDS AND SNAKE details the life cycle of a dragonfly and that species' relationship with its ecosystem. (…) No individual segment is long enough to fully interrupt our perception of apparent motion however, so we in effect watch three sequences at once, with Lehmann massaging in new footage to replace older sequences. The film borders on overwhelming, but Lehmann holds interest through a rigorous yet clever editing principle that allows for the subtleties of shifting tempos and images to constantly surprise the viewer. A menagerie of semiotic editing techniques employed during this exercise allows the marshy world of the dragonfly to unfold before us: dragonfly larvae hatch, whilst mere frames later, a bird slowly devours an adult specimen. We see bird and prey gradually merge forms, holding a constant value of image as all other areas of the frame flicker between positive and negative image, blue sky or green grass. DM in CINE-FILE.info
Chicago Guide to Independent and Underground Cinema, June 2012.
“A 'nature film' beyond even the wildest imaginings of David Attenborough: one silent hour of rhythmic, pulsating, fast-cut images of dragonflies, birds, a snake - and also some toads.
German-born, Swedish-based director Wolfgang Lehmann is evidently a keen scholar of the other three Rs: repetition, repetition, repetition. His most ambitious enterprise in a career that stretches back to the 1980s,Dragonflies is experimental film as beautiful mosaic, in which the rapidfire nature of the visual data means that everyone will 'see' something different depending on how the light and colours hit their retina.
Four years in the making and originally shot on gloriously imperfect 16mm before being transferred to video for editing, this hypnotically joyous evocation of natural lifecycles transcends ornithology and entomology to immortalise the most hidden and ephemeral of phenomena.”
19th Bradford International Film Festival, Catalogue, April 2013
Ein wilder Urwald aus Formen und Farben überwältigt den Zuschauer dieses Films von der ersten Minute an. Den stampfenden, pulsierenden Rhythmus gibt dabei die Materie des Films selbst vor. Drei Filmkader sind das Urmaß dieser Bewegung, solange hat das Auge Zeit, sich einen Reim auf das zu machen was da krabbelt und fliegt, wächst und rankt. Drei Filmkader bis das Bild springt, nur um drei Kader später wieder auf das erste Bild zurückzukommen. Die Wahrnehmung wird dabei extatisch, das Auge süchtig nach dem nächsten Bildersprung. Der 16mm-Alchemist Lehmann befeuert diese Sucht zusätzlich durch Zeitlupen, Negativ-Bilder und Doppelbelichtungen.
Underdox, München, Oktober 2013
In Swedish:
Om Trollsländor med fåglar och orm: ett samtal med Wolfgang Lehmann av Martin Grennberger
http://www.magasinetwalden.se/walden/2014/09/om-trollslandor-med-faglar-och-orm.html
In German:
