Flower Rain

A cosmic, texture study of flowers via photochemical reaction.
Celestial spheres morph into a drizzle of flowers and leaves: translucent, buoyant and dreamlike. With an inquisitive, meditative score by Kim Kwangsoek of sparse folk and lingering tolling of bells, Flower Rain is a photochemical, X-ray journey through the compositions and cosmic gateways of bloom.

– Fiona Armour Rotterdam Film Festival

Do we dream of flowers, or do we enter into the dream of a flower?
Flower Rain is an "organic" film that grew out of the soil, a film psalm that praises nature. Film director Gao Wei completed the film in three steps: planting, making the plants into photos, making the photos into a movie.
Flower Rain brings us into a microscopic level within plants and flowers, using the surreal characteristics of the plant photo. The luminous flowers flow like nebulae, and the transparent petals are like jellyfish snorkeling in the deep sea. The energy that plants draw from the sun and the earth is projected into the photographs and then into the film.

In fact, this movie is a by-product. All movie images are formed from still photos into moving image.
It all started with director Gao Wei’s art project “Plant Light.” She has been working on this project since 2020, during the pandemic time.
"Plant Light" is a series of photographic works that attempt to return to photography's original source by using organic materials, exploring classical photographic techniques in contemporary times, and re-understanding nature in the face of today's situation: the spreading epidemic and changing global ecological environment.
Using a special technique, from a time before cameras, based on methods of “Cameraless photography” and “photogram,” Gao Wei discovered her own way to work by hand: on her rooftop garden, a 15-minute walk from a national park in Seoul, she picks plants and leaves, some planted by herself, allowing the silver-sensitive particles and natural organic materials to interact. This results in a “cosmic explosion” of photochemical reactions that generate images from nothing.
With these images on paper and on film, Gao Wei created two moving imaging works in addition to and inspired by the still images, Flower Rain and Flower Tunnel.