A film by Jean-Philippe Marquis
2023 / 1h20m / Canada / English / English, French subtitles
A Red Cedar can live for over a millennium, sustaining multiple life systems and human cultures. But a rapacious chainsaw can decimate the same tree in a few short hours. And in the economy of commercial logging the tree only has value once it’s been cut down and transformed into a commodity.
At a time when the planet’s old growth forests are threatened as never before, Jean-Philippe Marquis has crafted a dazzling and unsettling film essay on contemporary forestry practices in the Pacific Northwest - home to the world’s oldest and most majestic woodland
Drawing on his own working experience in forestry, Marquis ventures into remote locations and worksites to encounter people whose livelihood and labour is connected in various - and often contradictory - ways to the forest economy and related cultures.
While a Haida forager roams old growth woodland, identifying evidence of a culture that used cedar trees to make everything from baby papooses to canoes, workers at an industrial nursery form an assembly line, producing over 300 million seedlings every year for monoculture timber plantations. Meanwhile commercial loggers clear-cut an entire hillside with devastating speed, leaving a solitary tree planter to scramble over the ‘green trampoline’ of waste they’ve left in their wake.
Juxtaposing sublime aerial imagery with vérité workplace footage, Marquis tempers his critique of neoliberal forestry practices with an up-close understanding for people who labour within the system.
Director
Jean-Philippe Marquis
Producer
Jean-Philippe Marquis
Editor
Jean-Philippe Marquis, Emmet Walsh
Cinematography/Dop
Jean-Philippe Marquis
Sound
Oscar Vargas
Music/Composer
Samuel Laflamme
Drone operator
Scott Bell
Color
JF Robichaud
Distributed by: Cinema Politica
22 авг 2024
