This April, Labocine delves into the intricate, ever-evolving relationships between humans and plants. From ancient agricultural wisdom to contemporary bioengineering, from medicinal herbs passed down through generations to the carefully curated flora of urban landscapes, this film issue traces how plants have rooted themselves in our histories, shaped our ecosystems, and continue to influence our futures.
As we explore botany through both science and story, we find ourselves not only preserving tradition but also reimagining new possibilities—how plants may guide us toward more sustainable futures, how they spark speculation and innovation, and how our entanglement with the vegetal world stretches across time. ETHNOBOTANICA invites you to contemplate the ways in which plants shape human experience—grounded in memory, blossoming in the present, and branching into the unknown.
The storm rumbles, a bed sinks into the night. My mother, sisters, brother and I share stories of humans and plants. In the old days, we used to cling to the trees to heal. In the old days, we used to burn for our medicines. Under the reflections of a moon, foliage moves with the naked eye, bacteria
Long before the village existed, they already populated the serras and mountains, up and down the hills. Sign of the Chapada, they sprawled like people throughout the rock clefts where the soil was shallow and the sun abundant. Evidently, they were the ones who gave a nickname to the small village t
In spite of its apparent simplicity, Groeien (Grow) is a thought-provoking reflection on the theme of genetics and the effects that human intervention can have on the natural world. The natural growing movement of the plants are progressively accentuated until they become highly unnatural. Eventuall
Light Needs is an experimental documentary about houseplants who cohabitate with people and the surprisingly intimate and complex relationships that can develop between them. Containing footage collected from many different domestic and professional spaces over several years, each home/site evidence
Something Mutual is a visual essay that navigates the landscape of urban flora in Mexico City, giving a voice to the plants that surround us. The project originated as a photographic documentation of urban flora in Mexico City, created in collaboration with Juliana De Lasse, a landscape architect ba
A human narrates the story of a bad dream after buying a gorgeous plant at the market. What starts as an innocent encounter to relieve loneliness from isolation becomes a nightmarish seduction scene between a plant and its human. Together they give birth to a new creature.
Seraphina is lost in the strange Garden. She asks the plants for help. An animated read-along celebrating the prophetic wisdom of more-than-human world. This animated film is a counterpart to In The Garden, a Risograph-printed collaborative graphic novel curated, printed, and published by Dominica H
This hand-processed 16mm film reflects on botanical animism. It is a song written for night-crawlers, compost, and shadows, inspired by human flower-lust. Water, fire, earth and air are interwoven with the garden's creature crew. The work draws a parallel between the photographic alchemy of cinemati
Made within the Four Sisters Growing Project, an eco-feminist agricultural project which is reclaiming disused brownfield land in the periphery of Amsterdam by Marija Sujica and Müge Yilmaz, in collaboration with The Beach. Once you till is a short film collage of human and other-than human tou
"Our Body is a Planet" is an art/science collaboration between Léonie Hampton of Still/Moving and scientists at the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter. This short film challenges the way we think of ourselves as individual genetically prescribed entities, independent
Right beneath our feet lies a living, breathing ecosystem, largely shrouded in mystery. A silent, bustling community of fungi, bacteria, nematodes and protozoa; microscopic organisms supporting soil's natural ability to filter water, store carbon and grow food. But as a result of industrial agricult
The world is in the middle of a global crisis, the fields are deforested, the rivers dry up and the lands belong to a few. The consequences are obvious, and searching for a solution can become exhausting. The call of nature, offers an answer.
Through the eyes of a scientist questioning plant consciousness, a pea plant dreaming of its past in Rome's Colosseum, and a botanist unravelling a mystery, The Everlasting Pea invites a profound reimagining of our relationship with the vegetal world.
An examination of three weeds - coltsfoot, dandelion, and goldenrod and each weed's direct effects on film stock via hand-processing with eco-processing techniques. The film reveals not only the visual characteristic of each plant but also of filmic qualities that each plant imparts on the film stoc
Un)earthing – Plant Knowledge and Dreams is an ambient dream journey that weaves together memories and personal stories of healing with plants. Much of the once-common knowledge of medicinal plants has been lost through the violent forces of capitalism, the church, and colonialism—erasur
'Neural Grass Reveries' is meditative animation with music composed by Telana. The artwork contains 50 plant-life glyphs of "grasses" channeled digitally using generative AI. The work explores the use of technology as a spiritual tool for connecting with the consciousness of non-human entities, reca
Filmmaker Christoph Schwarz is broke. Fortunately, he gets an offer from an Austrian TV documentary series: "Striking Years". But does Schwarz really want to start a self-experiment as an environmental activist? Wouldn't it be better to turn the project into a critique of capitalism, to live one yea
A birdwatcher tries to record the scarce birdsongs in a deactivated mining area, while a team of ethnobotanists faces the challenges of storing one of the largest natural history collections in the world. Scientific practices from the past and present meet in the investigation of a 17th century cata
New processes of mutation and mutualism by flowers and through artificial intelligence. Using a science fiction narrative, this project features a group of nine middle school students from the Marie-Curie college in Tourcoing who seek to mutate, to transform into flowers. This group evolves in colla
With movement inspired by Merce Cunningham's iconic piece "50 Looks," a group of dancers move together through a vast landscape seemingly plucked from an alternate future. Just as changing light infiltrates the choreography, so do 35mm negative manipulations, compelling the dancers to engage with fo
Antidote focuses on indigenous healers and their ancestral relationship to the Amazon rainforest, its spirit world and curing traditions. A group of foreigners arrive looking to recover from a variety of traumas. Using song, ceremony and ayahuasca, the most potent and transformative medicine of the
Bordering on the fantastic, Senescent Vivarium represents four distinct seasons created by plants and insects selected to imitate authentic biospheres. These macro worlds are architectural masters of their own domain yet defy traditional still life representations. Transient narratives of familiar e
In the municipality of Villa Guerrero, State of Mexico, flower growers and their families live with the hope of better times; in the meantime, they live every day in a field that no longer smells of flowers...
Agronomists as revolutionaries who sought political change through scientific work An archival, animated history of three scientists who became sparks to political and social revolution from within and beyond the lab. Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau, Africa), Nikolai Vavilov (Soviet Union), and
The first arabica coffee plant to reach Europe was brought in 1616 by the Dutch VOC to the Amsterdam botanical garden. It was likely introduced to Colombia by Jesuits less than 200 years later. A new video by Guzmán draws parallels between Cachipay's mist forest and the tropical plants common
An experimental film, focusing on the growth and flowering of the dandelion.
A sensual immersive visual trip in the world of magic, myth and nature in Indonesia. Ladya is working with a documentary crew who is searching for ancient pyramids and investigates supernatural stories about a lost royal kingdom hidden in the southern sea of Indonesia. In her spare time, she capture
Female scientists, illustrators and explorers of the past who contributed significantly to the development of modern botany have often been misunderstood or dismissed from official knowledge. The Extinct Desinence is a video that focuses on the lives and discoveries of some of them. The material, so
On July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spaceship tooks off with six crew members on board. In a short space of time they rose over fifty miles high, being able to observe planet earth. In the cockpit and for about three minutes without gravity, the billionaire tycoon Richard Branson celebrate
Arabidopsis thaliana juxtaposes the implications of injury, development and regeneration for plants, humans and cities, with a nod to one of the most popular plant model organisms in biology and genetics. Narrated by Selima Smith-Dell Cinematography by Toma Peiu & Luiza Pârvu Microscope imager
On Hannah Fields is a short animated documentary by Lewis Heriz, responding to a community garden in Littleover - a suburb of Derby - in the middle of England. The film follows the trajectory of recovery, of both the land itself and the people who frequent it and tend to it. It is a representation o
This film explores the growing rythms, patterns and textures of pink oyster mushrooms, chia sprouts and kombucha scoby. The audio is a collective poem that recounts the human experience of interacting with these beings. This film is part of the collaborative and transdisciplinary project Microteca,
Still lives of real fruit meet botanical illustrations of plant galls to expose the paradox of dissection: each time we cut something in two, we merely create a new exterior.
Pioneer species are the first to grow on damaged or barren land, creating conditions for others to follow. Pioneer Species follows artists, gardeners, and residents who, like these organisms, engage in acts of regeneration—composting, planting, and cultivating relations—in urban and peri
Inspired by Karel Doing's phytographies I foraged plants, placed them on a 16mm black and white filmstrip, and exposed them to sunlight. The cameraless film Plant Lights, composed in a little village in Lower Austria, Friedenstein, in August 2022, is an attempt to develop a photochemical practice th
'Gentle as Moss on Stone' is a poetic meditation on resilience, memory, and the quiet wisdom of nature. At the foot of a moss-covered hill he can no longer climb, a retired bryologist weaves tales of imaginary mosses for his young granddaughter. Each moss holds a secret remedy - coded strengths to h
Styawat/Leigh Joseph, a Skwxwu7mesh Nation ethnobotanist, navigates what it means to have grown up far from her ancestral lands, now that she has been guided back home to traditional territory through the teachings of the landscape and plants.
A video of a stop motion animated plant projected onto the plant itself.
-HUBRIS is an experimental docu-narrative that chronicles three individual journeys intrepreted by dance and circus artists, exploring a powerful storyline about climate change. Blinded by ego, their journeys symbolize the collateral damage induced by a culture deeply rooted in individualism-serving
In Trees of Rotterdam , Alice Ladenburg and Ollie Palmer portray the greenest inhabitants of the city of Rotterdam. In a single, virtual shot we glide through the city, while listening to stories about its green giants – that incidentally outnumber the people. Initially the artificiality of th
Seven years after the mysterious death of her mother, an isolated botanist meets an enigmatic, teenage runaway in a creek. Forming an unexpected bond, the two embark on a harrowing journey to confront their respective pasts, all while slowly realizing that they may not have to face their uncertain f
Devon-based artist Léonie Hampton talks to RAMM about her new commission, A Language of Seeds, which will explore the place of the garden in modern society, and the impact of climate change. Léonie is a photographer, and for this commission she is working with the metaphor and act of gardening and
Pendulum examines local plant life and constructed nature preserves, blending still and moving images to represent time's fluidity and its effect on botanical evolution. Through 16mm film and lumen prints created using flowers and vegetation foraged near Todmorden Mills in Toronto, Pendulum question
In collaboration with ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, artist-filmmaker April Lin 林森 presents 'TR333', a speculative documentary which imagines a new species of tree based on scientific literature on plants and climate hardiness. Their hybrid forms and body parts a patchwork amalgamation of different
Moving behind the trees, blending with the environment. Rooting consciousness deep into the forest. Reading hidden symbols. Walking on an invisible path and transforming into something else—a particle of a unified organism. Not many of us remember how to behave in forests. We enter as conquero
A filmic meditation inviting consideration of perception in vegetal beings. Vision is somatic, of the body. In humans, vision is a dominant sense for most people and can feel indistinguishable from the mind when thoughts, judgements, and reactions are unconsciously triggered through visual experienc
The seemingly extraterrestrial camera eye floats upside down through a palm grove planted in a strictly rectilinear manner. Nature is literally upside down and existing in an artificial order as a business game. Only at the crescendo of the strange, vibrantly smoldering soundtrack by Jung an Tagen d
A contemplative film about the boundaryies between natural and technological beauty. Can an AI-generated image recreate the beauty of a flower? In 1772, artist Mary Delany imitated flowers through decoupage. By pasting together hundreds of paper cuttings, she managed to depict flowers with exquisite
¿Se puede deletrar la hoja? is an experimental film that explores the archive of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid, using linguistic and visual resources to investigate how we represent landscapes. How do you describe a landscape, a leaf, a flower, or a sunset that you are seeing for the v
The video explores the lost but never-forgotten steppes of Eastern Ukraine. It reflects on the uneven flow of history and the representation of the natural landscape in times of ecological, military, and humanitarian crises. The name of the project quotes word for word from the Google Maps review of
Stamens and pistils are lit in rapid succession behind the dome of the Palm House at Allan Gardens in Toronto. The plants trade colour, making alien scenes in the conservatory. Solid forms, too near to the eye, become muddied and indistinct, in constant passage, but the dome and the grid are fixed.
The jay, the train, the moss, the soil trembling. How to listen to a space considered empty? 'underneath it flickers' takes different perspectives on la friche josaphat, a verdant fallow land in Brussels threatened by real estate development. By questioning our ways of looking and listening, the fil
What does it take? (to win your love for me) is a spellbinding love letter to a Monstera deliciosa, a tropical plant native to Central America. Hugging his domestic Monstera during a summery walk across the picturesque city of Basel, the artist revisits the plant's history and memory, as well as the
A looping experimental stop motion animation featuring a real plant dancing to music. I often will install it in a public space using projectors in various ways, such as inside taking up a whole wall, or outside amongst nature. Sound by Ethan Brown.
A flower held in its seed since the 19th century decides to go out and discover our world. This new birth confronts it with the vision of a possible end. The wilted flower represents the natural, perpetual, cyclical time of living things, while the burnt flower represents the time of contemporary hu
We filmed trees from a grove in Gladys Enea's park (Donostia, Gipuzkoa). The camera imitated the height of a young tree (we climbed a ladder in every shoot). The focal length determined the position we had to be for those trees to fit in the frame: The thicker the trunk, the larger the distance... P
Evergreen is an experimental film that explores the human connection with the forest from personal, political, and cultural perspectives. The narrative touches on themes of forced separations and loss. The film's visual language draws inspiration from Belarusian paganism, which depicts a forest god
A 16mm work that, through speculative fiction, gives voice to the plants of the Copenhagen Botanical Garden established in 1872. While the order of events and anthropic control prevent a rewinding of time and the return of these plant-bodies to their sylvan nature, the narrative stratagem put on fil
Chemical Affinities traces the impacts of ammonia fertilisers in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal, examining material and territorial manifestations such as cultivation patterns, artifacts and infrastructure. Aiming to problematise the role of chemicals in accelerating and managing growth, t
A seed a deer a seed is a short film that examines the conservation efforts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, in Austin, TX. Developed as part of a residency program at the Botanical Garden, the film threads together stories and modalities of care and management of local ecosystems while b
we breathe each other in and out of existence (2021)* A celebration of home through the magic of plant life. Plants harvested in Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina. *Originally presented as an installation incorporating 16mm clear leader with adhered botanicals, digitized projections, environmen
The Imperial Valley represents one of California´s most important regions of industrial agriculture. Corporate agricultural production interests have been able to successfully cultivate and exploit this geological part of the Sonora desert through a gigantic irrigation system fed by the Colora
A father finds shelter in the memories he created together with his daughter to whom he hasn't spoken in years. The film transforms into a go-between in an attempt to unite them through images, sounds, and letters.
The Sicilian Channel is one of the most traffic-intensive areas in the world. In addition to being an ecological corridor for birds migration, it is the crossroads of merchant ships distributing materials for the industry. It is a human migration corridor and the place where fiber-optic cables are l
A young man from Malabar walks along the Portuguese coast, contemplating the imminent loss of his ancestral garden. While his mother catalogs the plants in their garden, two Portuguese spirits roam the tropical night in search of black pepper, misled by the herbalist Garcia de Orta. / (work-in-progr
Germination layers found footage to create a formal and temporal reinterpretation of vegetative life cycles. Score written and performed by Victoria Jordanova.
Botanist Julio Betancur and his disciple, young Cristian Castro, return to Colombia's tropical forests to explore once again their passion for nature. Through the lens of Director Guillermo Quintero, former student of Julio, we will travel in the middle of a delirious expedition that will lead us to
" No two plants are exactly alike. They're all different, and as a consequence, you have to know that difference. I start with the seedling and I don't want to leave it. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately. And I find it a great pleasure to know them. " - BARBARA McCLINTOCK To
A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film's emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve. The film consist
The root meristem is cut with a needle under the microscope. These cuts remove the root stem cell niche responsible for new cells and growth of the organ. In preparation for microscopy, we stain roots with Propidium iodide to outline cell walls.
'stille gronden' (silent grounds) explores the strong connection between landscape and human experience through a natural cemetry in the south of Netherlands. The poetryfilm highlights the deep intertwining of the individual and nature. Elisa Verkoelen investigates how a landscape can offer solace a
Inside Ballona/Waachnga (site-specific single-channel video installation, initially spread over two outdoor screens) 30:36 min, color, silent Inside Ballona/Waachnga is an exploration of human and non-human notions of time in motion, where I delve into how different beings experience and interpret t
Filmed in the countryside garden of the Lupu family in Romania, Mihaita Lupu narrates intimate reflections on the lifetime projects of his family. A parallel between the ancestral process of gardening, (sowing, growth, harvest) and the inevitable progress and change within a family throughout time.
Feel is a montage of the plants and flowers behind my home. It is a visual poem. We see what we see every day, and changing that, warping it, is my visual poetry—opening up new perspectives to expand on our limited sight. For me, it is a way to process time and the passing of it. Every visual
As an excursion to the work of botanical and film preservation, "Herbaria" explores in its invisible processes the artistic and political derivations that connect them. Sustained in a narration where times and spaces seem to merge, the records invite us to the fascinating universe of preserving the
Nature and body at work over the course of a still yet disorderly year on a foreign land. "In that place, memory means something more than just something one looks back on, or something one feels from the past, it means something real for now that has made you." - RT
Thoughts on control and care examines the power structures of colonial history in the context of botanical gardens. In episodes of stillness and movement, the voiceover repeatedly scrutinises the filmmaker's own clearly structured ideas and definitions of nature and questions the hierarchical system
This project emerges from a profound investigation into a vacant lot adjacent to the artist's residence in São Paulo, Brazil, undertaken during the tumultuous period of March 2020 to May 2021, encapsulating the experience of the pandemic. More than merely an empty space, this lot represents a
Garden Work imbues the structural cues of a botanic garden and deploys the concept of divine proportion through the form of its making. Compositional prompts are derived from phi, while shot duration adheres strictly to numbers from Fibonacci. In this space, and in the realm of untouched nature, ord
Other than the ocean, the rest of the planet was bathed in purple, which was due to the color of the vegetation. The change in the sun's radiation had probably caused the plants to evolve as they adapted to the new light.
Withered Season Flowers explores a feral ecology that has flourished in the abandoned greenhouses of Ventimiglia, Liguria, Italy. The camera drifts slowly, accompanied by the sound of the plants' sap, through a greenhouse once used to cultivate Rosa chinensis , a flower imported from China in the 18
The "Joaquín Antonio Uribe" botanical garden in Medellín, Colombia, is a living museum and a Science Center; its herbarium Jaum treasures about 86,000 plant specimens and a representation of the flora of all the ecoregions of Colombia; The Arví Regional Ecotourism Park is an eco
This "Field Portfolio" is a single channel version of the multichannel installation "Herbaria x pelicula." A consideration of collection as both archive and act, "Herbaria x pelicula" examines the work that takes place at the HAM Herbarium of Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada), located in Burlington O
Weaving documentation of three phases of botanical life and death – from garden, to wax paper, to illuminated manuscript.
The inhabitants of a city awake one morning to find that never-before-seen trees, plants, and flowers suddenly erupted throughout the streets and in the squares. Strange and mysterious events start taking place as Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these new and peculiar creatures.
Like a journal page suspended in time, I explore uprooting away from Cuba through film and plants.
In a realm of suspension, two naturalists women study plants in the digital age. They are gradually contaminated by a green fluidity.
"Language Unknown" embraces plant sentience as fact and speculates how beings of the vegetal variety might approach interspecies communication with humans (who are far more sensorially limited). Leaves, mycelia, and roots playfully examine how humans experience the world, and the (supposedly) silent
Two people break into the floral park of Vincennes at night, to force a field of dandelions to open by action of light in a few minutes.
Throughout America, women organized tea parties for meetings and fundraisers to support the suffrage movement. The Woman's Suffrage Party sold ceylon, young hyson, gunpowder, and oolong tea under their charitable brand "Equality Tea." Yet the history of tea is steeped in inequality, driven by coloni
Zaire, January 1993. Rachel's family, an 8-year-old French girl, lives in Kinshasa in a house overlooking the Congo River. Following the usual routine (shopping, lunch, nap ...) the city is subjected to violent looting by Zairean soldiers. Luckily, Rachel's family escapes their violence. She, her mo
In this film people appear, but only as one factor amongst others. Callused hands sow, weed, build and rake; stooped backs bring in the harvest.
In a forest glade, sunlight dances across leaves and grass, revealing a complex scene shared by diverse beings. The trees, with their sensors, record the subtle variations of light, sound, and climate that animate the earth. As hybrid forms emerge within this dynamic ecosystem, visitors are invited
Demeter, a caretaker of the botanical garden in Budapest, tends to the cacti. In the hermetic space of the greenhouse, time seems to follow a different pace and rhythm. Humans care for the plants, and the plants in their way, respond.
The Glass Cathedral presides over a perfectly ordered landscape. Everything is arranged, labeled, obsessively categorized - collaged together over thousands of miles. Using the artificial paradises of two botanical gardens in Germany and Portugal, Unspecial Effects reflects on the narrative of catas
TerraForma is the story of the remote desert island of Ascension: for a million years entirely devoid of life, but which was engineered by process of 'terraforming' into a tropical paradise. It is also the story of what that transformation may mean for the fate of our planet, in a future when terraf
The root meristem is cut with a needle under the microscope. These cuts remove the root stem cell niche responsible for new cells and growth of the organ. In preparation for microscopy, we stain roots with Propidium iodide to outline cell walls.
DESERT PHOSfate is an experimental documentary film by Sahrawi artist Mohamed Sleiman Labat. It weaves through the story of phosphate, exploring the multi-layered narrations about connections to land, sand particles, plants, human and mineral displacement. The film explores ways of telling about rea
Plantaphilia is a collaborative project that consists of a series of analogue films exploring the life of plants through intuitive visual and sound. Encompassing the perspective of plant ontology, we allow the encounter with plants to be an embodiment of intuition to produce a free interpretation of
Happy Tree is a short film made for the 7th Annual Imagine Science Film Festival (themed around TIME) 48 Hour Competition and won first prize. The film features Mari in the lead role as Dr. Eleanor Drew and was directed by Jonathan Minard. The script was based on a scientific paper by neuroscientist
Sahar tirelessly explores volcanic landscapes to find a rare mineral. But what she finds out shakes her research, her connection with the atmosphere and our Milky Way.
A witch's cauldron bubbles, releasing swirling smoke that conjures visions of invasive plants—Yellow Flag Iris, Himalayan Blackberry, Scotch Broom. Their presence lingers, entangled with an industrial scream that cuts through the forest: the sound of a surface air blower from the Quinsam Coal
Picaflor is a video installation of a 16mm film that deals with the relationship humans have with flowers through an inaugural fiction: it wants to imagine the first time someone felt the desire to possess the beauty of a flower and plucked it from the ground. Generating a kind of mythical origin of
Could it be that the food you eat, the clothes that you wear are all possible because of one amazing bacteria? Mary-Dell Chilton's research on Agrobacterium tumefaciens led to the groundbreaking discovery that the bacteria could transfer its DNA into plants, revolutionizing biotechnology by enabling
An androgynous scientist lives confined to the ice of Antarctica, taking care of a closed artificial ecosystem for space colonization. Virtual relationships, artificial suns, and nutrients dissolved in the air are the core of a crystallised world pervaded by the emotional temperature of extreme isol
Based on research into local botany, this film is an attempt to expand the possibilities of the archive. Under the mantle of the cicadas, the plasticity of the material expands between poetic and philosophical reflections.