All human-made infrastructure constitutes an intrusion into nature, and in the case of Riga Airport, this is visible to the naked eye – seen on a map or from above, it looks like a patch of concrete carved out of the forest. Laila Pakalniņa, that Latvian master of showing us the unnoticeable and turning the mundane into poetry, zooms in on the blurred outlines of this human-occupied no man’s land, where animals, driven away from their natural environment, seem determined to reclaim it, only to encounter mightier beasts: machines.

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Much like in her 2002 short documentary Dream Land, in which she revealed to us a fascinating animal world hidden in a rubbish dump, and in her other observational works, including last year’s Termini [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Laila Pakalnina
fiche film], set at a bus stop, in Scarecrows, Pakalniņa films her targeted area during all four seasons in order to follow life’s cyclical rhythm and let it shape its own narrative structure, rather than imposing her own view. The film has just celebrated its world premiere in the Doc@PÖFF Baltic Competition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, together with ten other contenders; indeed, it’s a berth where it seems to fit best, as the omnipresence of nature in the Baltic way of life feels entirely organic.

DoP Māris Maskalāns’ camera follows the staff of Riga Airport’s bird and wildlife control unit up close, without ever interfering, making us feel as if we’re among them – participants in the ongoing race undertaken by the animals that venture onto the runways, risking both their lives and potential plane crashes. Foxes, hares, deer, even a worm – and mostly birds – come and go through this transitory space, creating small-scale but dramatic conflicts unbeknownst to the regular users of the airport. Sneaking in only at designated hours – amidst wind, frost and snow, and between coffees and inside jokes – the unit’s workers appear as both enemies and saviours: on one hand, they are there to restore order; on the other, by helping the animals and trying to preserve their lives, they seem to be making excuses for the human presence by giving the least they can offer. On the other side of the fence, pairs of eyes and ears peek out and listen for movements in the incomprehensible universe across the way, inhabited by noisy, giant creatures whose speed and scale are incompatible with the harmony of the forest.

Without the slightest hint of eco-activism, Pakalniņa observes and records, with her charismatic curiosity, the interaction between two conflicting worlds, opening our eyes to the parallel realities that exist just a stone’s throw away from the areas along which we rush through our orderly, clearly bounded everyday lives, within shared spaces we believe we control. These conflicts can be seen in the visual contrasts between the enormous aeroplanes and the tiny birds that are, in fact, their “prototypes”; between the sterile environment and straight lines of the airport, and the “disorganised” wilderness surrounding it, which always resists strict order; and in the simple interplay between noise and silence, between stress and tranquillity, and between the transient and the eternal. And most importantly, no one who sees Scarecrows will ever land at or take off from Riga Airport indifferent, without scrutinising the distance for those invisible realms beyond the confines of our own restrictive horizons.

Scarecrows was produced by Latvia’s VFS films and co-produced by Lithuania’s Moonmakers.