Issue

Mountain Panorama

November 2024

Mountain Panorama invites audiences to explore the diverse geographies, ecologies, and cultures that shape the peaks and valleys of our planet’s most enigmatic landscapes. With a series of films that traverse the summits and delve into the depths of mountainous terrains, this program captures the monumental presence of mountains as spaces of both human habitation and scientific inquiry. From stories of geological transformation to poetic meditations on solitude and resilience, Mountain Panorama frames the mountain as a meeting point where natural history, adventure, and science converge—revealing the many ways these towering structures continue to inspire wonder and challenge our perceptions of the natural world.

"Mountain Panorama" is a film program on Labocine that celebrates the Science New Wave by exploring the intricate relationship between mountains and the natural world. This collection showcases films that illuminate the ecological, geological, and cultural significance of these majestic landscapes, inviting viewers to engage with innovative storytelling and contemporary scientific inquiry. Join us for a visual journey that inspires a deeper appreciation for the wonders of the mountains.

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Mountain View

FILM Austria 2018
Markus Maicher

Three continuous zooms towards a landscape are deconstructed into a discontinuous appearance of single frames. The panoramic view is obstructed, the organic movement of the hand dissolved into structural variation of the basic units of film. Indexical content is inevitably present on the physical fi

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Water Mining (Eaton Canyon)

FILM United States 2021
Kate Lain

Water Mining (Eaton Canyon) is a nature film made with a stream, rather than about it. Its images come from a combination of cyanotype, a blue-and-white photographic process dating back to the 1840s, and actual plant material adhered to physical film. I hand-coated clear 16mm leader with cyanotype c

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ULÍA

FILM Spain 2024
Laura Morneo Bueno

A collage constructed from the frame that proposes to unite different places from the distortions of space, enclosing different landscapes in the same frame. Creating non-existent but potentially real landscapes.

263 Loop

FILM Turkey 2018
Serdar Kökçeoğlu

Music video by Serdar Kökçeoğlu is part of the 'Mimaroğlu Video Remix Project', consisting of musical reworkings of 8mm footage filmed by the composer İlhan Mimaroğlu. The project was realised as part of the production process for the feature documentary "Mimaroğlu".

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Climbing Iran

FILM Italy, France 2020
Francesca Borghetti

Nasim is the pioneer of outdoor climbing in Iran, where women should train on indoor walls only, during set hours, and only among other women. Nasim decided to go beyond the barriers imposed on women in her country, setting up her own route on the Persian rocks.

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Willkawiwa (El Sagrado Fuego De Los Muertos) [Willkawiwa (The Sacred Fire Of The Dead)]

FILM Ecuador, Costa Rica 2022
Pável Quevedo Ullauri

Jaime falls dead abruptly, while he works on his field in the Ecuadorian Andean paramo. He is the newest victim of a deadly and mysterious disease that has struck his Indigenous commune. As his body lies lifeless on the ground, his animal spirit emerges from his body. He wanders through the Andean m

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King Coal

FILM United States 2022
Elaine McMillion Sheldon

Central Appalachia is a place of mountains and myth. Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon knows this well, calling those mountains home. Coal has had a profound influence on this community's identity, but Sheldon dares to consider what future stories might look like out of the shadow of coal, now that

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O.T (2013)

FILM Austria 2013
Markus Scherer

Markus Scherer´s four-minute film O.T. begins as though it were a landscape painting from the nineteenth century. A snow-peaked mountain top rises majestically. The camera's motionless gaze invites careful observation: one recognizes the steep rock flanks on which no snow is lying, perceives t

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How Azure Is Dying

FILM Georgia, Armenia 2024
Egor Skorokhodov

An old man observes the world of mountains under the azure sky. He sees the birds singing, his mad wife crying, his children walking, a crippled man sitting, the wind blowing and the azure sky dying and reviving itself…Who will ever close his eyes? Emil Nolde, Geog Trakl, Joan Mitchell&hellip

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Feet in Water, Head on Fire

FILM Canada 2023
Terra Long

An invisible line connects California to parts of the Middle East and North Africa, where similar climates provide ideal growing conditions for date palm trees. Using textural 16mm, filmmaker Long surveys the arid California landscape along the San Andreas Fault—from microscopic plant cells to

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The Magic Mountain

FILM Belgium 2020
Eitan Efrat Daniel Mann

Focusing on underground locations such as quarries, tunnels and caves, the filmmakers investigate the insatiable human desire to extract natural resources from the ground. In three chapters, they explore the healing powers of radon gas found in Austria, the powerful energy felt in stones in Switzerl

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Rang Mahal (Palace of colours)

FILM India 2019
Prantik Basu

Until recent years, the Santhal tribe of India did not have their own written language. Their stories and myths were preserved and passed on verbally through the generations. Each narration has a different form, much like the rocks of a nearbyhill that come in various hues. This documentary portrays

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Höhenrausch (Mountain Trip)

FILM Austria 1999
Siegfried A. Fruhauf

Mountain Trip is a cinematic myriorama constructed of hundreds of Austrian postcards, which reflect a country´s hackneyed trappings as no other medium can. (Siegfried A. Fruhauf) The parameters of this experiment have been clearly defined: Two rows of postcards with mountain motifs (the cards

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Mulika

FILM The Democratic Republic of Congo 2022
Maisha Maene

An "afronaut" emerges from the wreckage of his spaceship in the volcanic crater of Mount Nyiragongo. As he encounters the people of present-day Goma in the city, he begins to understand how to change the future for his people.

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Our Mine

FILM United States 2021
Shayna Strype

In a handcrafted world where nature exists in harmony, a handful of greedy businessmen exploit a mountain's riches. The female body creates both landscape and characters in this darkly comedic myth about human hubris.

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Tindaya (2015)

FILM Austria 2015
David Krems

A camera pan along the horizontal line of sight oriented on a singular object in the landscape: Tindaya contrasts the monolithic presence of a silent mountain range with the speed of a fleeting movement. Although this may seem to be a topographical measurement of a stretch of land, it turns out to b

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Terra Mater – Mother Land

FILM Rwanda 2023
Kantarama Gahigiri

There she stands, confidently, like a goddess of technological junk, surrounded by endless mountains of rubbish, plastic, stench and rare earths. An angry appeal to the world to take responsibility for the consequences of capitalism, colonialism and environmental destruction in Africa. For our land

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Tellurian Drama

FILM Indonesia 2020
Riar Rizaldi

Mount Malabar in West Java, Indonesia, shows us a spectrum of human-nature relationships: the Dutch colonial government saw the mountain as a suitable spot for an antenna for radio transmission; for indigenous communities, the mountain itself is a partner for spiritual communication. In Riar Rizaldi

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alpine passage

FILM austria 2008
Michaela Schwentner

Alpine Passage is a film comprising individual images about a journey over Alpine passes. The mountain remains before us, impressive as a painting, and in front of that the sort of architecture that makes it possible for us to examine the mountain up close. A panorama view from a mountain pass canno

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Sentieri vengono tracciati dove prima non ce n'erano (Paths are traced where there were none before)

FILM The Netherlands 2021
Giorgia Piffaretti Sophie Wright

'Sentieri vengono tracciati dove prima non ce n'erano' flips the majestic narrative of conquest into a sensory, attentive exploration. Looking past the main protagonists in an anonymous photograph and onto a little figure in the background, a speculative future ascent opens a new narrative space tha

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Ore (2018)

FILM Austria 2018
Claudia Larcher

Claudia Larcher frequently deals with architecture in her works. For example, she cuts catchy building parts out of photographs and combines them into multi-perspective collages in different media. In ORE, on the contrary, she falls back on natural formations. The video animation is an unbroken diag

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The Depth Beneath, The Height Above

FILM Switzerland, United Kingdom 2018
Andrea Bordoli

The Depth Beneath, The Height Above consists in an exploration of the high alpine region of Robiei, southern Switzerland. Conceived as a sensory piece, the film particularly focuses on the existing relationships between the humans, animals, infrastructural and natural elements that compose Robiei's

Discovering Mount Gorongosa

FILM United States, Mozambique 2012
Federico Pardo

Biodiversity Exploration on Mozambique's Sky Island In August 2011, Field Museum and African scientists joined forces in an expedition to Mount Gorongosa in Gorongosa National Park. Their goal was to study the diversity of birds and small mammals from this remote region and the parasites that live o

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Requiem to the Hot Days of Summer

FILM Georgia, Greece 2023
Giorgi Parkosadze

Guri and his mother, Sanata, have spent all of their life in a remote mountainous gorge in Georgia, distanced from nearly any signs of urban civilization. Farming, beekeeping, and cheesemaking have been their lives' routine for decades. While witnessing the daily life of mother and son, the audience

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Sansui Llafretaw

FILM Japan 2021
Eugene Kangawa

These images were taken in solitude on mountain roads which had been inherited secretly from a distant past by mountain worship in Tohoku region of Japan. From a snowy mountain at night in the moonlight, to a waterfall, a plain in the mist, and mountains gleaming in the sunlight, natural phenomena c

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The One Close to the Sea

FILM Belgium, United Kingdom (Scotland) 2023
Wout Biesmans

A sensorial experience of men in nature. The One Close to the Sea shows the immersion of a filmmaker in a Scottish landscape. Not a narrative representation of what happens on the surface of this landscape, but the search for a simple rhythm, that lies underneath this landscape and makes up its esse

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LICHTHÖHE

FILM Austria 2021
Thomas Hörl Peter Kozek Victor Jaschke

Goethe wrote, "Mountains are silent masters." As if! There's plenty happening on the Grossglockner. For example there's Oskar and Jörgen, bright blue snow vehicles fighting their way through the flakes. When they finally face each other, they blush in red, then pink, green, and orange with exci

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The Sea Seeks Its Own Level

FILM United States 2013
Erin Espelie

The snotgreen, scrotum-tightening sea. An empty bay: history is to blame, unhating. They are coming, waves, white-maned seahorses, wind brindled. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. Salt green death, spiked and winding cold seahorn, music everywhere.

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Moving Mountains

FILM Netherlands 2023
Renko Douze

On his quest to map the consequences of climate change, mountain hydrologist Walter Immerzeel and his team venture to heights where other scientists do not go. From his tent base in the Himalayas, he monitors over 200 instruments measuring variables like snowfall, temperature, air pressure, solar ir

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Thermopower

FILM United States 2024
Maya Livio

Thermopower explores the biological concept of thermoregulation across mammals and machines. It introduces the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small mountainous relative of rabbits and indicator species for the climate crisis, as a frame through which to articulate how thermoregulation affects

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Stick Climbing

FILM Austria, Switzerland 2010
Daniel Zimmermann

A contemplative walk leads to a bizarre climbing tour. The camera that has just panned over everyday village life now homes in on a construction of wooden slats to then follow a breakneck route up a vertical rock face. From the perspective of the invisible climber, we experience a seemingly impossib

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K2 and the Invisible Footmen

FILM USA, Pakistan 2015
iara lee

Located on the border between Pakistan and China, K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth. For many climbers, it is an even greater prize than Everest, with limited routes, a steeper ascent, and a harder push to its summit. Nicknamed the 'Savage Mountain,' K2's peak juts unprotected into the atmo

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Jurek (2015)

FILM Poland 2015
Pawel Wysoczanski

On 24 October 1989, Jerzy Kukuczka dies during the Lhotse expedition. It was the first time when we went to the Himalayas with money, equipment, and as a really famous person. The documentary by Paweł Wysoczański does not, however, concentrate on the mystery of the Himalayan mountaineer's death. It

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The New Plastic Road

FILM Greece 2020
Angelos Tsaousis Myrto Papadopoulos

Davlat is a Tajik merchandiser and a humble father of three children. A well respected businessman in the Pamir area, a mountainous region southeast of Tajikistan in the borders with China. His life has been transformed since the opening of the Tajik-Chinese border and the reconstruction of the old

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The Place (2015)

FILM Poland 2015
Julia Popławska

In a workplace situated higher than any other in Poland, the constant nocturnal observation of the surrounding world is an unbroken norm. The employees suspended beyond time and space in 'The Place' remain at their posts, unshaken and immovable, despite reversals, adversities and startling situation

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Mørke

FILM France 2023
Alexandre Ries

Filmed during a voyage in Lapland, Norway, the video depicts a crepuscular landscape as the camera glides over the sea in a 38 minutes long take travelling amongst islands and mountains. Propelled by a drone music improvisation, the film takes us on an immersive experience through a journey in time,

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From the Mountain

FILM Ireland 2014
Michael John Whelan

An exploration of humanity's increasingly questionable relationship to, and distance from, the natural world. Imagery of wolves and Irish wolfhounds sits in contrast to historically important locations in Ireland and Germany, including the site where the last Irish wolf was killed in 1786. Abstract

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Merapi

FILM Canada, Chile 2021
Malena Szlam

Java is one of the most volcanically active islands on earth and today the significance of volcanoes in Javanese culture is in transition. Animists have long conceived of volcanoes as the home of ancestor spirits and ghosts. Craters and lava domes have been dwelling palaces for spirit kings and quee

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The Tough (2019)

FILM Poland 2019
Marcin Polar

The Tough carries a lot of meanings: defiant, vicious, resistant, relentless, strong, resilient, cold, hard. The film's protagonist had a reason to choose this name for his discovery - a place he has to face where he learns about all those characteristics tangibly and literally the hard way. It stir

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Pushed up the Mountain

FILM USA/China 2020
Julia Haslett

PUSHED UP THE MOUNTAIN is a poetic and emotionally intimate film about plants and the people who care for them. Through the tale of the migrating rhododendron, now endangered in its native China, the film reveals how high the stakes are for all living organisms in this time of unprecedented destruct

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Les creuseurs (The Diggers)

FILM Canada 2020
Mathieu Roy

The Diggers is an observation journey into various artisanal mining sites in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film shows the arduous and surreal labor of adults and teenagers extracting coltan, tungsten and black tourmaline. Our camera captures their repeated movements, their picks,