Harvest
Harvest
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Grasses sway in the wind. A hand with black fingernails picks up a snail. The man taking in the trees, meadows and water with all his senses is widower Walter Thirsk, a city dweller turned farmer. He is a romantic anti-hero, not fully belonging to the village, not really part of it, and torn between loyalty to the villagers and the concepts of progress. At the centre of this impressionistic fable of demise is a small community of superstitious farmers and shepherds. It is the era of the enclosure movement, where land is being mapped, agriculture commercialised and common rights lost. Who is to blame? The outside world invades the village in the form of a patriarchal aristocrat who wants to turn the land into a profitable business. On the inside, a fire that breaks out during the pagan harvest festival consumes the cohesion of the community. The villagers rush to find someone to blame, and are soon ready to violently persecute a trio of innocent strangers.
With fluid gender roles, ambivalent characters, scathing wit and surreal images – such as when the village children beat their heads against a stone to affirm their belonging – Tsangari adapts the Booker Prize-nominated novel by Jim Crace. Sean Price Williams uses grainy 16mm film and mainly natural light sources to create an atmosphere where idyll and brutality coexist. Harvest is a film much like a painting. An atemporal allegorical drama about xenophobia and unfettered capitalism.
Guest: Athina Rachel Tsangari
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Filmmaker and producer Athina Rachel Tsangari is considered a central figure in the new Greek cinema. She studied comparative literature, philosophy and theatre at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki before completing a master’s degree in performance studies at New York University and studying film at the University of Texas. Her path to cinema came through a role in Richard Linklater’s legendary film Slackers. The Slow Business of Going was her graduation film. She went on to produce films like Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth – with Lanthimos later producing for her acclaimed feature Attenberg, winner of the IFFF Dortmund+Köln Feature Film Award in 2010. This year, Athina Rachel Tsangari is a member of the jury for the International Feature Film Competition at the IFFF Dortmund+Köln.
Films by Athina Rachel Tsangari
Chevalier 2015 | Borgia 2014 | 24 Frames per Century 2013 | The Capsule 2012 | Attenberg 2010 | The Slow Business of Going 2001
