To Pick a Flower

Selected filmography: To Pick a Flower (2021), Nervous Translation (2018), Big Boy (2012).

Open City Documentary Festival, New York Film Festival, DOK Leipzig.

Spanish premiere 

"During my investigation, I found the photo of a young bride posing outdoors for a portrait, but instead of the groom, a plant was by her side." A slightly broken voice-over describes the photo that we can see on screen. Indeed, a young girl in her wedding gown is posing alongside a plant. The next still shown is very similar to the first: another woman posing alongside another plant. However, this time, it is not so clear whether she is a bride. As in the first case, the voice-over once more describes the woman. These two photos are part of the archival photographs from the American colonial occupation of the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 and the voice is Shireen Seno’s, the film director. Her voice accompanies the entire film, whose starting point is the interest in the relationship between plants and humans. Balete, Eucalyptus, Molave, Salingbobog, Tamarind. Different plants of the Philippines photographed, many at the side of a white settler dressed in white and “similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken”, in the words of the author. In other photos, beside the plants Philippine people are depicted with more humble clothing and always working. From her initial interest in the predatory attitude of human beings in relation to nature, the investigation gradually leads us to reflect on colonial capitalism in the Philippines and on photography itself. The filmmaker recounts how a friend told her that taking a photograph is like picking a flower. "It's pretty and you'd like to pick it but, at the same time, you're killing it. The camera allows us to cross this narrow line between life and death.”

Lur Olaizola