Silvicola

April 24 ONLY

7 pm
2023 – Documentary
14A — 1h 20m

Set amongst the rugged forests and shorelines of the British Columbia, Silvicola is a tableau of the complex web of cultural and economic forces which compel and constrain modern forestry practices. A story told through the eyes of an eclectic mix of characters whose lives and livelihoods are intimately entangled with the forest, Silvicola employs sinuating vignettes and industrial soundscapes to explore the tensions and dilemmas between commodification and conservation.

Contemplative and sensorially immense, Silvicola embeds the viewer within remote spaces and worksites normally hidden from view, from the verdure of old growth canopies to the destructive gigantism of mechanical harvesting to the numbing rhythm of sapling nurseries. A study of both our connection and disconnection with the forest, Silvicola is a film which demands a rethink of the divisions between natural and industrial worlds by spotlighting the hidden labour and logics of modern forestry.

At a time when the planet’s old growth forests are threatened as never before, Jean-Philippe Marquis has crafted a dazzling and unsettling film essay on contemporary forestry practices in the Pacific Northwest — home to the world’s oldest and most majestic woodland. Drawing on his own working experience in forestry, Marquis ventures into remote locations and worksites to encounter people whose livelihood and labour is connected in various — and often contradictory — ways to the forest economy and related cultures.

While a Haida forager roams old growth woodland, identifying evidence of a culture that used cedar trees to make everything from baby papooses to canoes, workers at an industrial nursery form an assembly line, producing over 300 million seedlings every year for monoculture timber plantations. Meanwhile commercial loggers clear-cut an entire hillside with devastating speed, leaving a solitary tree planter to scramble over the ‘green trampoline’ of waste they’ve left in their wake.

Juxtaposing sublime aerial imagery with vérité workplace footage, Marquis tempers his critique of forestry practices with an up-close understanding for people who labour within the system.

John Kastner Award – Hot Docs 2023
Jury statement: “Many films ask the question, how are we meant to exist upon a living being, our Earth. This is a masterwork of patience and complexity that doesn’t seek easy answers, and for that we lean in with humility and heartache. This is a film that holds questions we should all be asking ourselves.”