Solitudes

A love letter to cinema and a personal reflection on loneliness. Segment from Fringe Hippo's anthology film "Elegy Apokalypto".

Félix, a young, melancholic and secretive shepherd, leads a surprisingly timeless life. He lives alone and works along his father to raise the family herd. From autumn to spring, he looks after his animals, feeds them and keeps them in the dense forests of holm oaks of French Pre-Alps. In the summer, he travels on foot for more than two hundred kilometres, leaving his father to lead the herd to the mountains pastures, in the High Alps Ubaye valley. There, he lives far from everything for many long months, in a mineral and inaccessible world where an invisible being prowls: the wolf. Against the tide of his time, Félix has chosen a profession that isolates him and keeps him out of the world.

“…this documentary capturing important aspects of Thoreau’s life and writings is highly recommended.” Video Librarian, May 2018 Made over the course of 13 years, Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul tells the story of Thoreau in his time and the story of the impact Thoreau’s writings and lifestyle have in our time. Surveyor of the Soul has interviews and commentary by: Laura Dassow Walls (author, Henry David Thoreau: A Life), Bill McKibben, Howard Zinn, Richard Primack, Megan Marshall, Rep. John Lewis, Robert Bly, Wai Chee Dimock, Spencer Crew, Darren Ranco (Penobscot), Rochelle Johnson, and more. “If you are not yet a Thoreau enthusiast, this beautiful, engrossing documentary just might turn you into one. If you already are, it will remind you of the many reasons why.” Lucille Stott, Appalachia, Winter/Spring 2019

An observational documentary following Steven Brooke and how the solitude of painting impacts his life and artwork.

On the age of 51, a father leaves his family to live as a carpenter. Away from the family and house burdens, he spends his last 15 years living alone. From the point of view of his child, the idealistic father then changes his mind to let go of everything and lives his dream of traveling.

A Short film by Christophe Bisson

Processions

Weeping Rocks follows Art, an entomologist nearing the end of his life, who has spent over five decades walking the same ten trails counting butterflies. His eccentric practice has uncovered patterns of environmental decline that went unnoticed for years. As time reshapes the landscape and species fade, Art’s journey becomes a meditation on mortality, change, and the beauty of what remains.

I traveled to South Africa to find a white family living on a desolate farm. I wanted to film how they faced the new days of equality after the fall of Apartheid. But I soon lost my way both on the endless roads and in my way. Instead, the film became a story about two very different women who both experienced a tragic loss in the midst of a white community not too fond of the future.

Parce que le soleil se lèvera encore

Madrid, Spain, March 2020. As the merciless disease that plagues the world spreads through the increasingly deserted streets of the city, people barricades themselves in their homes and move on with their lives…

A café in the north of Brussels. Days are punctuated by the songs that the customers sing at all hours, to amuse themselves, to remember or to pass the time. Those songs transform the place little by little, making the film a strange musical.

Inta is a brusque, crusty woman who lives alone on the edge of a picturesque marsh. One day her solitude is intruded upon by the arrival of a documentary filmmaker. In his eyes Inta is an outstanding would-be film protagonist but the wild woman would rather put a curse on the importunate intruder than let herself be filmed. But the filmmaker's persistence finally succeeds in melting the ice of Inta's heart... just in order to break it soon afterwards.

Located ten miles off the coast of mainland New England, the Oceanic Hotel is the grand, yet far-from-modern home to the thousands of guests who brave the choppy seas to visit during the warmer spring and summer months. Off-season, the hotel and the 43-acre Star Island on which it sits is home to one woman - its winter caretaker who braves the colder, darker months of inclement weather by embracing the solitude and finding inspiration, and life, in what would otherwise be considered the 'bones' of winter.

The film follows 94-year-old Nežka as she navigates loneliness, the loss of those she loves, and the quiet emptiness of everyday life. Her faith becomes a source of strength, while nature and animals keep her connected to life and the world around her.

A Place of Our Own

Young people who decide to leave their home to seek opportunities for the future face different difficulties on a daily basis. The inevitable estrangement with family and lifelong friends. The constant lack of understanding, the coldness and individualism of the new city. The stress and even the feeling of being a stranger back home. This journey to the future sets out issues about identity, nostalgia and courage, while they fight to find their place in a changeable world.

A meditation on memory around Iceland's famous Ring Road.

I Dreamed of a Man Who Dreamed of Horses

Omama, a rural grandmother in Hungary, has one main wish: to not wake up tomorrow. Martin, her cinema-expatriate grandson, comes for a visit, hoping to connect with her before Omama's wish comes true.