IDFA 2006
4 Elements
Jiska Rickels
Netherlands
2006
89 min
World Premiere
In 2003, Dutch director Jiska Rickels won several awards with her critically acclaimed graduation film , about an old lignite mine in Germany. This film is now part of an ambitious four-part documentary on the primordial elements. In , Rickels shows how man lives and works in both struggle and symbiosis with fire, water, earth and air. She follows forest fire-fighters, king crab fishermen on the Bering Sea, German mineworkers and Russian cosmonauts. The precise and aesthetic images tell their story without words, and are accompanied by a musical score that often seamlessly merges with sounds from the film. Rickels alternates spectacular scenes (an immense curtain of smoke that rises out of the forest as if by magic, a glimmering rocket blasting through the night, fishermen as they haul in gigantic traps full of jumbo crabs) with intimate, almost tender images that reveal the men in their literal and metaphorical nakedness (in the shower, scrubbing each other's backs, silently drinking coffee before heading off to work, hoarsely singing melancholy songs around the campfire). From the darkest depths of the mine to the lift that transports space travellers to their shuttle, not only shows man's awe of nature, it shows how the two are inextricably linked.
Credits
Screening copy
Fu Works
Fu Works
Distribution for the Netherlands
A-Film
A-Film
Director
Production
Co-production
Nederlandse Film Academie,
NTR
Nederlandse Film Academie,
NTR
Cinematography
Screenplay
Editing
Narration
Narrator
Involved TV Channel
NTR,
VRT Canvas,
YLE
NTR,
VRT Canvas,
YLE