I have a short attention span. For something to hold my attention in the midst of a busy design shop with phones ringing and a crappy radio station playing, it has to be good. Really good.
Ashes and Snow, a 60-minute feature by filmmaker Gregory Colbert, is that good. In fact, I found it to be spellbinding. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I would say this film comes close to being life changing for me. (Experience this film by clicking on the video links at end of this post.)
Within seconds of launching the DVD, images poured across the screen like honey in a visual poem uniting humans with animals. I entered the world of Ashes and Snow easily — or it entered me.
Transported, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was on a vision quest in which Colbert had magically evoked elephants, cheetahs and hawks as spirit guides and message-bearers. With its sepia tones, whispered voices and tranquil music, this was unlike any DVD I had ever seen. It was a new hybrid experience in meditation.
Apparently, I am a late bloomer when it comes to Colbert’s work. The 60-minute feature film is part of the Nomadic Museum, an exhibition created to endlessly travel the world, with no final destination. The exhibition opened in 1992 in Venice and has since traveled to New York, Tokyo, Santa Monica and Mexico City.
The Ashes and Snow exhibition weaves together more than 50 large-scale photographic artworks, the film and two short film haikus. More than ten million people have visited this exhibition. The film was born out of Colbert’s journeys to India, Egypt, Burma and Kenya. He photographed more than 40 species — including a whale, an orangutan, a manatee and elephants — to create what crit
ics call “a 21st-century bestiary.”
Colbert began Ashes and Snow in 1992 to “explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out.” Indeed, the film succeeds beautifully in allowing viewers to transcend “the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.”
“In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals,” Colbert notes, “I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals.”
The title Ashes and Snow refers to the literary aspect of the exhibition — a fictional account of a man who, during the course of a year-long journey, pens 365 letters to his wife. Fragments of these letters are part of the film’s narration.
Ashes and Snow, Documentary/Drama; Written and directed by: Gregory Colbert; Narrator: Laurence Fishburne; Release Date: 2005 (USA), Flying Elephant Productions
Photo Credit
“Ashes and Snow” © Gregory Colbert
Kerry….
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Such bliss.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Kerry. The film clips are so stunning, and speak more than we could possibly express with words. I’m very moved.