Gideon Koppel | 2008 | ★★★★
Koppel spent eight months in the small farming community of Trefeurig, Mid Wales, making this remarkable, elegiac cinepoem, in which farm work, the travels of a mobile library, and the general everyday lives of an ageing population drift in and out of each other, as fears about the closure the village school gradually grow. Mixing awe-inspiring landscape photography with more mundane – but no less absorbing – everyday human activity, the film delicately paints a portrait of an idyllic rural lifestyle, whilst also hinting at the nefarious presence of the "progress" that threatens to bring it to an end.
Koppel spent eight months in the small farming community of Trefeurig, Mid Wales, making this remarkable, elegiac cinepoem, in which farm work, the travels of a mobile library, and the general everyday lives of an ageing population drift in and out of each other, as fears about the closure the village school gradually grow. Mixing awe-inspiring landscape photography with more mundane – but no less absorbing – everyday human activity, the film delicately paints a portrait of an idyllic rural lifestyle, whilst also hinting at the nefarious presence of the "progress" that threatens to bring it to an end.
