“Vegetal filmmaking is not concerned with the thematic or symbolic use of plants in cinema, What it aims at, instead, is the incorporation of the perspective of plant-thinking as a structural mechanism for the production of images.” Graig Uhlin, “Plant-Thinking with Film: Reed, Branch, Flower.”

As part of my research into the materiality of film conducted during a virtual summer residency with Project:Soils, I am creating a number of Arbor Film Loops. Found footage film stock is looped around trees and left to the elements to naturally alter. As rain and elements degrade and sunshine illuminates the filmstrip, twigs, leaves and branches become part of the image.

The Arbor Film Loops are meant to be experienced live, in-person, as cinema, but are also documented in photographs and short video clips.

Arbor Film Loop No, 1, Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, June 2021 featuring The Kirtland’s Warbler, 16mm color, produced by Walter and Myrna Berlet.