This Our Still Life Review

This Our Still Life
Using home-movie cameras, director Andrew Kötting captures his family at work and play in their rural home in the French mountains.

by David Parkinson |
Published on
Release Date:

18 Nov 2011

Running Time:

59 minutes

Certificate:

U

Original Title:

This Our Still Life

Prompted by Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man (1962) and filmed between 1989 and 2010 with Super 8 and digital still cameras, Andrew Kötting’s sublime home movie captures the intimacy of life with partner Leila McMillan and daughter Eden. Moreover, it celebrates the creativity of the natural world and 22 year-old Eden, who defies a rare neurological disorder to sing, paint and live with boundless enthusiasm and considerable skill. Kötting enhances his deeply personal but cunningly composed images with soundbites from the family archive, and succeeds in chronicling the passing seasons and questioning the purpose of existence with a mischievous insistence that makes this accessible exercise in avant-gardism endlessly engaging and irresistibly inspiring.

Infectious and uplifting, it's an hour very well spent.
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