THRIST by Estonian film-maker Kristina Norman at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival (6 – 10 November) in York.
Screenings
Wednesday, 6 November at 15:30-17.00 at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM), Walmgate, Y01 9TL
Friday, 8 November at 10:00-11:30 at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM), Walmgate, Y01 9TL
Saturday, 9 November at 13:30-15:00 at City Screen 2 Picturehouse, 13-17 Coney Street, Y01 9QL
The film Thirst is a post-human choreography of displaced plants and machines. The thirst for luxury and abundance is the force that keeps the capitalist machinery running. The dry wells and the thirst for drinking water is what the local communities in Estonia are left with as the fragile wetlands are being drained for peat excavation in their neighbourhoods. Millions of tons of Estonian peat end up in greenhouses in the Netherlands where peat is needed as a component of the soil substrate for phalaenopsis orchids. While the mass-produced orchids may seem like a pathetic mimicry of what once was an extravagance of the elites, they are now a consumer good available for almost everyone. But the customers of cheap orchids have indeed consumed luxury, considering the massive invisible resources used during the manufacture process.
Thirst is an episode of Kristina Norman’s Orchidelirium film trilogy.
Commissioned for the Estonian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.