Ordinary events are imbued with a poignancy in this documentary showing the fragile power of community and identity in a Belarusian villageCast in a subdued, beige-toned palette, the tableau-like compositions in Kristina Savutsina’s documentary portrait of a small Belarusian village echo the wry sensibility found in the work of Swedish director Roy Andersson.
Like in the latter’s output, Khan’s Flesh traffics in the mundanities of everyday life, where ordinary events also hold the capacity for poignancy and irony.Throughout this crisp 57-minute film, the camera remains static, yet the highly associative editing creates a sense of movement and rhythm out of stillness.
Moving from one ordinary space to another – a hospital bed, a church, a community meeting room, even a graveyard – Khan’s Flesh manages to elicit a kind of circular totality out of a constellation of minute gestures.
At once simple and monumental, images of reunion and separation,…
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