Modern Rose, Huancor, Pakatnamu Premonition, Three Short Forms

Triptych of films shot on Super 8 in Peru: “Modern Rose” studies the geometry of an Inca palace, “Huancor” follows Andean petroglyphs, “Pakatnamu, Premonition” captures the film’s flickers caused by a “huaca” at the edge of the Pacific ocean.

Signs are everywhere, threaded through three films by geography and the dancing grain of Super 8. In the first of the three segments, a series of short static shots captures the geometric splendour of the remains of an Inca construction. Each of these ochre monochromes sees architecture and light come together to create patterns (sharp-edged triangles, perfect ellipses) which are so clearly defined that they seem to constitute a mysterious alphabet of ideograms. The second film conveys this impression in a very concrete way, with a sort of inventory of motifs (suns, animals, homunculi engaged in various activities, cryptic diagrams) engraved further away on the mountainside. The last film, on the contrary, touches on the invisible. At a coastal archaeological site where filmmaker Louidgi Beltrame has come to scout locations, an elusive force seems to be working against him, with his camera jamming just as he is about to film some ominous bones against a gloomy landscape. The resulting jerky and blurred images are intertwined, in a somewhat Warholian gesture, with other almost identical images, taken from a second shoot at the same location, this time completely stable and clear. From one shoot to the other, it is as if a spell has been broken – and according to the story told in the film’s opening, this may well be the case. As we have understood from the first two films, the landscape is a language, and it warns us that its whispers are not to be taken lightly.

Jérôme Momcilovic