CHAPTER 3: ROOTS

scene objectives:

- slow shots with vegetation only
- fast/dynamic shots with people

Metahaven - EURASIA

Starting in “dark noise” , slowly close up shots of skin and vegetation appear on the screen. (Maybe with a purple torch?) Slowly we recognise the protagonist, lying on the floor in an embryo, crawled up, protecting herself. As she starts to move and awakes after being dormant, her movements are aching, hesitant and careful. The blindfold she was wearing before lost its “eyes” and she seems to be without vision. Slowly, she moves her limbs like roots looking for nurture. Her old robes are lying on the floor next to her, shed off.

The beginning was difficult.Landing on strange soils made both me and my mum, already aliens to our so called motherlands, out of sudden completely removed from it.

Scene describtion:

What’s this place here? This land of opportunities? Is that how it looks like? Every plant seems to have its own palace. How do I fit?

A primary root emerged as I learned the language. Repeating the birdsongs around me, they seemed to become mine. I erroed my shell coat, and fertilised the growth of my roots with the resilience I created during my dispersal. I decompose my outer identity, I pushed through the darkness.
Further and further, I adjusted, adapted, assimilated, creating roots in strange soils.

I began to realise that non-native plant species were all around me, deeply woven into this landscape, yet we all tried to become invisible. You can’t really blame the migrant for wanting to disappear.

But, I bleneded in so much, that I no one recognised me anymore. In the end, we were only good enough to be the working class. I became to used to just surviving. And while I slowly disappeared in the eyes of the landscape, I became leaner, harder and pushing my selves constantly to the breaking point and a survival-high, just trying to grow as tall and as fast as all the plants around us too.

One day however, she recognised me, because was herself was diaspora too. Living in foreign soils it was named after the dutch province, loosing its ukrainian name, Kalyna and with it, its symbolism associated with the native land, blood, and family roots.

Did I follow possibilities that were empty genes that fail to reproduce themselves?

Sky closed.

a species, sharp and brittle,
digging for nutrients to fill an unfillable emptiness.

Looking back home, it stared back at me with strangeness.

I wondered, when adaptation would turn into cultivation?

Sketch Voice Over

(very close up - to the camera moving away from her, hand held/or more smooth?)
She was suddenly a stranger to these new grounds - compacted ones. Discovering this place, she tries to resemble the plants around her. Her mouth moving, trying to adapt her langue to that of her surrounding.

She began working, and trending to these plants as she slowly disappeared between them.

This scene continues for a while. Slowly an effortlessness evolves, and she became used to the movements, the work, the plants, being invisible. She performs different working tasks. But then, also, her movements slowly become exhausting.

Suddenly, the image of a Gluederrose appears. A deciduous shrub, its hermaphrodite flowers are white, snowball like like an ornament. But really special are its fruits, bright red berries, which are standing out in the winter.

The protagoist holds her berries in her hand, and eats them. As she does, she looks up into the sky for the first time, behind a glass ceiling, the sky is grey. (bird view & pov)?

The sky becomes a portal to the next chapter.