Some Kind of Intimacy by Toby Bull | Khan's Flesh by Krystsina Savutsina

Some Kind of Intimacy   

Toby Bull directs his camera toward the sheep, he speaks on the phone with his brother, while he insists on shooting, almost searching for (something in) the sheep. For five minutes, no more than that, and yet, this minimalist film is huge, for it seizes a just intuition, a sort of vision: the brothers’ parents are buried there, where the sheep graze, as if they knew… The camera searching becomes so a clumsy then right way to grieve. With different approaches, the brothers’ longing for the parents seems to find an answer, possibly a presence. Besides the medium of the phone and through the medium of the camera, Bull makes of the animals a visible medium. In this way the animal’s lively silence becomes an unexpected bridge to the beloved that have departed, and we seem to rediscover an ancient truth, in the flesh of the real.

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Khan’s Flesh

Daily life in Belarus, when observed with Western eyes, could sound crazy, but Krystsina Savutsina is not seeking for exoticism in her coming back to her roots. Skilled editing enhances the cutting gesture and often de-contextualised scenes of work, of leisure, of celebration. The sometime humorous, sometime puzzling result is a kaleidoscope of sketches describing a multiple stories structure. However, Khan’s Flesh is something more than a diversion, for at the end of the almost hour of film, and thanks to its peculiar structure, the integration of people in the gears of procedural life emerges as the main theme: a meaningful and critical theme for Belarus.