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Arbors, Herbs and Banana Leaves

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Arbors, Herbs and Banana Leaves

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Country/Region: Mainland China

Release Year: 2024

Publish Date: 24 January 2025 00:00:00 UTC

Story:

The worlds of plants and human beings are entangled and mutually influenced. In Jingmai Mountain of Yunnan Province, China, the plants have woven the material and spiritual lives of the Blang people. For example, arbor trees are believed to have divine power, herbal plants can be used as ingredients and medicines, and banana leaves serve as both a spiritual medium between the people and their ancestors and a material product that builds a necessary part of human life. This ethnographic film adopts a multi-species perspective and, through the mode of plant music, tries to present the plant as a subject, not just an object of human activity.

Casts & Crews:

Xiaohui LIU
Directors

Runtime: 62 minutes

Language: Mandarin, Blang dialect

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Festivals & Awards:
2024 World Nomadic Short Film Festival, China 2024 Ethnographic Film Festival & ICH Film Festival, China 2024 West Lake Youth Documentary Forum, China

Tags: #Blang ethnic minority group, #animism, #plants, #plant music

Stills:

Director‘s Statement:

This film is my graduation project from the Master's program in Visual Anthropology at Leiden University. It explores the intertwined and mutually influential worlds of plants and humans. When we regard plants as equal subjects to humans, how can we present this through visual ethnography? Thus, I chose to conduct this exploration in Jingmai Mountain, home to the Blang ethnic group, which believes in animism and respects the spirits of the forest. Wild plants are woven into the material world and spiritual life of the Blang people there. I found a device that can externalize the internal state changes of plants as music and conducted a plant music experiment in Jingmai Mountain. Let's see what stories the Blangs will tell us when the plants they coexist with encounter such technological means.