Set to the relentless rhythm of nature, the home movies shot by my father recount 10 years of life marked by simple memories and everyday moments. But beneath the surface, fragments of another story creep in — Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, the Kuwait fires, Dolly the sheep — traces of a fragile world shaped by man. The hill behind our house, with its perpetual birdsong, continues to be the soundtrack that punctuates our lives, reminding us that, in the end, no matter how deep our marks may be, it will always prevail. Despite everything, the hill will always sing.
Country
ItalyYear
2025Length
3'
Category
ExperimentalScreenplay
Lavinia XausaCinematography
Lavinia XausaEditing
Lavinia XausaMusic and sound
Leslie LelloProduction
Lavinia XausaSynopsis
Biography
Lavinia Xausa (Bassano del Grappa, 1992) studied in Bologna and Berlin and graduated from DAMS in Bologna in 2015. In 2017, she obtained a master’s degree in photography from AKV St. Joost in Breda. She lives and works between Veneto and the Netherlands. She creates interdisciplinary art projects involving groups of people and inviting them to reflect on identity and social issues. In 99% of cases, these works turn into films. Her music documentary So Loud The Sky Can Hear Us was presented at the IFFR Rotterdam in 2022.
Statement
When I lost my sister two autumns ago, the only thing that truly comforted me was observing the relentless rhythm of nature. Every year, the hill behind my house strips its trees bare and hardens the ground, then everything is reborn in spring. The immense pain of grief is somehow alleviated by the awareness of how small we are in the face of nature’s cyclical time. The time of our lives, memories, relationships, creations — however precious — are nothing more than small fragments destined to be absorbed into the infinite time of nature.
The idea for this film came from a recording of birds singing on that hill. After returning to my parents’ house for a while, I realised that that sound had always been there, a constant soundtrack before and after my family’s life. Listening to it again, I realised how the images captured on my father’s camcorder, filmed over a period of ten years, are only small pieces of family life compared to the constant and infinite song of the birds. Their call never stops accompanying us, marking the memories of our friends, family and society.
My father’s videotapes, each with the year written on them, became the starting point for a journey between memory and oblivion, between what we leave behind and what surpasses us. In the film, subliminal fragments of Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, the fires in Kuwait, and the cloning research that marked that decade creep into the domestic images. As I dealt with the loss of my sister, I also look at these events as tragic moments destined to be absorbed into the rhythm of the earth.
— Lavinia Xausa
Archival materials
Home videos and TV news footage from 1986 to 1996.
Screenings
Extra
