The work was open for viewing only during the Summer Screenings 2024.
TO CUT A TREE ON A GREEN MOON (Cortar Un Árbol En Luna Verde) by Felipe Esparza France, Peru (2021)
From the diary of Christopher Columbus, October 15, 1492: “And deviated from the land by two lombard shots, there is in all these islands so much depth that one cannot reach it. These islands are very green and fertile and have very sweet airs, and there may be many things that I do not know, because I do not want to stop to go through many islands to find gold”. They had only been on land for four days. The gold never existed. It is only possible to suppose the sweetness of the air.
The islands are still green.
Director’s statement:
Returning to that well-remembered phrase, perhaps it could be thought that what cannot be talked about is not only the warning of a perceived border of the verbalizable, but also the disquieting disfigurement of certain limits that occur behind it. Or several. Perhaps all of them. There in the unspeakable would occur, without paradigmatic control, and possibly at the same time, all the time, everything that is experienced. Everything. “The Aleph”. Let us return to our side: certainly after the dream, the memory, an imprecise account of the whole memory and its possibilities in a more or less lunatic time. The rumor of the night, the colors of the sky, the songs, the fire, the rain; the beating of the trees, which resemble each other; the roar of the rivers, which resemble each other; the crickets, the faces, the stalking of time. Then, after the memory, emotions. And after emotions, the unspeakable. Is it the closest thing to the unspeakable that can be lived in emotions? And could it not be the longing to return to the unspeakable for which so much has been lived? So many sorrows, glories, devotions, crimes, ambitions, misfortunes, fears, anguish, illusions, migrations, loves? As with our time, uprooted of reasons, unstructured, capriciously fleeting, deceptively linear, it is in the unspeakable where the authentic and unrepeatable act of being is experienced.
Bio:
Felipe Esparza Pérez (1985. Talara, Peru) graduated with a master’s degree from Centro de la Imagen (Lima) and Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains (France). His work creates dynamic links and tensions between film and visual arts, with a strong interest in rituals, faith and its symbolic derivations and the relationship between image and time, image and history, and image and truth. His work has been shown in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin -New Cinema and Contemporary Art, Guangzhou Image Triennial (China), Shangyuang Museum of Contemporary Art (Pekín), Biennale Videobrasil (Sao Paulo), Los Angeles Film Forum, FIVA Videoart Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Curtocircuíto, Moscow IFF, Torino IFF, Beijing BIFF, among others. He is currently a fellow at the Film Study Center at Harvard University.
Director, writer: Felipe Esparza
Producer: Lorena Tulini
Cast: Jorge Soplin
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
