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| Sums up the film pretty succinctly |
The folks at the Fantasia Film Festival really do a marvelous job of carefully and thoughtfully describing the films on their roster. They have to, with more than 80 features from which to choose, one has to be discriminating. The Creeping Garden's description really swayed me, so I found myself on a rainy Monday afternoon nestled in the Salle J.A. De Seve theater watching a documentary about slime molds. The charming co-directors introduced their film, and promised to stick around afterward for questions. Soon I was immersed in a gloopy, eerie, slow-moving and utterly foreign universe. Well, not utterly foreign. I grew up in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, so I'd encountered these things before, but didn't think much of them. Now, with this film, they became completely fascinating. For slime molds are not just creepy fungi--they are hybrid creatures that continuously move.
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| Distinctive time lapse photography makes the slime mold a constantly roiling and slithering force of nature |
The directors describe the film as a nature documentary in a "science fiction skin," and the atonal soundtrack combined with the time lapse photography really emphasizing the "creeping" quality of these organisms. The documentary links this attraction to "natural wonders" to the first inklings of cinema, when magic lanterns carrying hollow slides were used to project for audiences images and shadows of the "natural world." Slime molds were a part of early cinema experiments!
The film follows several "characters" who are even more obsessed with these slime molds than the film's directors. One scientist uses the slime mold's movements to create algorithms for robotics; another fellow programs a piano (a la John Cage) to play in a way akin to the changing behavior of slime mold; yet another works at a "Fungarium" where different varieties of fungi, and slime molds, are stored (there are something like 500 different species of slime mold)**
**when I went to verify that number, I got 450, 700, 500, you name it, so let's just say there are a lot of moving blobs out there.
My favorite interview subject by far was Heather Barnett, an artist who made fractal patterns from the movements and abstract designs of different slime molds, and then made things like wallpaper out of the patterns. In another instance, she had groups of people tie themselves to each other, and "behave" like slime molds, interactively going after oat or rice flakes like hungry slime mold. She was so creative and cool, I just wanted to hang out with her, even if she had an inordinate interest in what looks like a bunch of "my dog just got sick."
One of the directors revealed that he shot most of the slime mold footage in his kitchen. Ewww. They also wanted to do a scene where they had a slime mold gradually (through tame lapse photography) "eat" or "take over" a fake city set, but they just didn't have the money or the time for some of their ambitions. Too bad. Frankly, I really had no idea that I would like this film as much I did, but this representation of the slime mold universe alternated between creepy and just plain cool. Worth checking out.
The film follows several "characters" who are even more obsessed with these slime molds than the film's directors. One scientist uses the slime mold's movements to create algorithms for robotics; another fellow programs a piano (a la John Cage) to play in a way akin to the changing behavior of slime mold; yet another works at a "Fungarium" where different varieties of fungi, and slime molds, are stored (there are something like 500 different species of slime mold)**
**when I went to verify that number, I got 450, 700, 500, you name it, so let's just say there are a lot of moving blobs out there.
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| Must Eat Brains! |
One of the directors revealed that he shot most of the slime mold footage in his kitchen. Ewww. They also wanted to do a scene where they had a slime mold gradually (through tame lapse photography) "eat" or "take over" a fake city set, but they just didn't have the money or the time for some of their ambitions. Too bad. Frankly, I really had no idea that I would like this film as much I did, but this representation of the slime mold universe alternated between creepy and just plain cool. Worth checking out.
