SYNOPSIS
A poetical documentary. Four men live and do everything that a modern man does not do – they live in nature and harmony with it. Producing almost everything they need with their two hands, their humble life becomes an inverted image in the mirror of modern man who destroys nature and destroys himself in his self-sufficiency.
Four characters, through four seasons, paint a fresco of the transience of their everyday life and their intimate life stories that are refracted through phases by the eternal return of the same one of the countless natural cycles.
The film creates a space where the director’s and composer’s poetics meet the life of the protagonist, the last examples of the native way of life in the real and metaphysical space of the Pannonian country, its world of nature, and traditional culture.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
There are three basic topics that this film deals with:
- the world of nature, universal and also a very specific world of of the Pannonian plain
- the world of people, presented concretely and metaphorically through four main and few secondary protagonists with their way of life, life stories and views of the world
- art brought in the poetic key of the author and his associates.
The highest, deepest inner goal that we would like to reach with this film is the sacralization of the profane, spiritualization of the elementary, earthly, everyday life of man in and with nature. Discovering the metaphysical dimension in the space of the real relationship between man and nature. What we care about in this film is above all a symbolic truth, which in some cases is realised by documentary means, and in some by poetic once.
In Praise of "4 Suns & Piano",
a filmic labour of love by Boris Kovač
4 SUNS & PIANO is a Hymn to Nature – a poetic song in celebration of Nature… It is also a Requiem for Nature – an ardent lament for the slow extinction and vanishing of Nature.
It is a Declaration of Love for a vanishing world – the world of those who have lived in harmony with Nature, who have conserved centuries-old traditions that cultivated a balanced exchange with Nature. This is the world of four extraordinary people – three farmers and a fisherman – who since birth have remained in awe over what Nature has provided them: all they need for a decent, healthy and happy life. And in their gratitude, they return to the earth that which they have taken and honour the cycles of the seasons. These perceptions and practises have given these four men a wisdom that is sorely missing in today’s societies all over the world.
And as we people on this planet Earth now find ourselves in a tectonic shift, about to be thrust into a new era that wants nothing to do with our past and with our hard-wrought civilisation… as we find ourselves on the brink of an abyss… we wonder if we can still learn from these men of the soil and of the river before we destroy everything.
In its form, this film represents a rare return to the language of cinema, which, in our neoliberal globalist world, has been muzzled and almost silenced by a homogenised film industry that promotes conventional narrative-driven works that dull the senses and the soul.
It is telling and not by chance that such a film was made – not by red carpet celebrity or a recent graduate of a film school – but by a virtuoso composer of music and seasoned musician! This film dares to utilise those primary tools that comprise the essence of cinema: time, image, sound… Thus it touches our senses, inspires our imagination and stirs new thoughts in us.
Through the masterly composed images, the discerningly fine selection of sounds and the intermittent strains of evocative music… we are drawn into the world of the filmmaker, and we undergo a transformation that is akin to a spiritual experience. This is the true power and magic of cinema!
When we enter into that world… we can smell the rich soil, the vast undulating fields, the herds of sheep, the waters of the Danube, the smoke of cheering fires in winter…
we can taste the harvested fruits, the fresh brewed coffee, the home-made rakia shared with friends, the freshly caught fish…
This film is moreover instilled with a metaphysical quality in that, within the musical flow of images and sounds, we can find our own space for contemplation and reflection.
In a space of nearly two hours we are abducted into a world where we can momentarily escape from the mad, senseless frenzy of our days and find some peace… and perhaps even some wisdom and an awakened spirituality.
Nora Hoppe, director, writer, independent thinker
