Vita Brevis

In the time left to us, we will have the privilege of witnessing a new miracle of nature: millions of blooming mayflies whose lives will be as short as a sigh. They are floating in the river Tisza, flowing into the Danube. Vita Brevis is an ode to the passing moment, an evocation of the light and fleeting dance of life as symbolised by the aquatic insects caught by the Belgian filmmaker Thierry Knauff with his camera/net. The mayflies, or Ephemeroptera, are the oldest species of winged insects on Earth. Knauff’s is the perfect film to bring our programme on time in film to a close, celebrating one of time’s most puzzling paradoxes: the fragility of eternity.