05/12/2024 - Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton accompany the titular botanist on several excursions through the Normandy countryside, where the small things take on a great value that fast-paced life has camouflaged

7 Walks with Mark Brown, the new collaboration between the artist Vincent Barré and the gardener Pierre Creton (A Prince [+see also:
film review
interview: Pierre Creton
film profile]), at the 14th Lanzarote Film Festival received two special mentions: from the young jury and the official jury. In the official jury’s public analysis they noted that the French filmmakers, by filming the minutiae of real life, have returned to the spirit of the Lumière brothers, highlighting this film for its luminosity, over the rest of the competition, which is full of dark, dramatic and terrible stories.

It is true that this great little film, which had its world premiere at the FIDMarseille last June, where it won the French National Centre of Visual Arts (CNAP) prize, is pure light. It all takes place outdoors, in the forests, meadows and beaches of Normandy, where a group of people and a chocolate-coloured Labrador dog accompany the British botanist Mark Brown. Watching, filming and learning about plants, from the simplest flower to the most sophisticated - and camouflaged - carnivore, because even this apparently exotic species is closer to us than we thought.

Divided in the form of a diptych, the film has a first part - filmed in digital - as a kind of “making of” for a later film. It shows how this human flock, loaded with a film camera, wanders through seven different places, paying careful and respectful attention to what is growing freely around them. In the second part of the film we enjoy the result. A glossary of frontal images of plants that the scientist of the title describes with their name, origin and characteristics, whose soul has been captured by the analogue camera; which we saw in the first part of this non-fiction film.

A far cry from the spectacular and epic nature documentaries that are usually popular on TV screens and platforms all over the world, 7 Walks with Mark Brown is based on humility, simplicity and calm, as if it were an organic extension of the Canary Islands festival.

A fiercely independent feature film, where the directors have also been involved in the script and editing - one of its characters jokingly compares it to Derek Jarman's The Garden. 7 Walks with Mark Brown invites the viewer to forget about rushing around and embrace the peace and quiet. Get back to basics and put away your screens, share evenings with friends or neighbours and - as at some point in the film - allow nature to observe us as well.

The film also exposes how the climate and fungicidal disruption caused by humans is affecting all living beings (grasses, insects, trees, etc.). Some of which are supersensitive and after managing to survive for thousands of years, may now have their days numbered. But it does so in the format of a friendly botany lesson. Calm and thorough, while, during the excursions, someone writes their impressions down in their “dream book”, another person draws flowers in their notebook, and Mark Brown drops pearls like “let's be humble and simple like wild flowers”, “let the plants speak” and, at the end of the filming and while shedding tears of emotion, he describes this film process as “seven days of happiness”.

7 Walks with Mark Brown is produced by the Parisian company Andolfi.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)