Outtakes from Baram Writer

 

 Outtakes from a Baram Writer project 

The word baram is a transliteration of 바람, or wind.

The project started twelve years ago, with a very crude moviepoem rendered in MovieMaker on a wheezy second hand laptop. (If curious: Baram Writer

https://youtu.be/oPHzuqDuAec )

It’s been through several versions since then, the most recent here: Baram Writer (new version)

https://youtu.be/Oc9PS6vXd40 )

I’m trying to capture “fugitive sensations” in the project; the sorts of thoughts and emotions one has while walking with loved one in nature, and experiencing a mix of happiness and anxiety, the latter a recognized of the worlds “objective” — that is, savage — nature.

The photos and settings of this extended project are changing: the one in the foreground is a spot near Lake Ontario that has personal significance after the deaths of my brother, mother in law, father, maternal aunt, and mother. What is the connection between the living and the dead? Memory, obviously. But there seems to be something more too, and the austere seasons of autumn and winter connect rather directly to that something.

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BARAM WRITER

EXT. SEOUL. WINTER. LATE AFTERNOON.

It’s a greyish day, and Mats feels a mixture of coldness and clammy, wet mildness through his clothing.

Then the temperature starts to drop…

Wind blows through trees, rustles dead leaves, makes branches sway in a creaking, slow dervish.

VO [male]: The wind has its own tone, its own feeling. It’s like … coldness, thinness.

It’s like hunger.

The wind has a body. The wind is someone.