Way of Nature

In nature, everything is birth, death, and rebirth, even when man is there to observe it. Just as she did in her 1996 documentary , Swedish filmmaker Nina Hedenius records life as it silently but unstoppably passes by. In her earlier documentary, Hedenius filmed the daily routine of an old man named Ragnar. This time around, she records the sounds and movements on a farm under the clear northern light. Without adding a single word, not even from the people working on the farm, goats, cows and horses are born and the seasons go by. What we get to see is a perfect symbiosis of man and nature. The farmers have learned how they can live off the land, but the farm's small scale breathes respect for nature at the same time. The silence and the rhythm in which the daily activities pass by emanate that same respect. The milking of the cows, even if it's done by machines, scenes of animals and people eating, resting: the combined sounds and images are like a music composition that you only recognise if you listen very patiently.