Join us for the opening of Ruth Maclennan’s A Forest Tale, premiering the artist’s latest film in the UK. Consisting of several different narratives, the film portrays the complex world of the subarctic boreal forests of Russia, which serves as both a habitat and a source of life for a large and diverse community of people.
ABOUT THE FILM
A Forest Tale (33 min) was filmed in Russia and finished one day before the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ruth Maclennan: “This film was shot over two weeks in December 2021 in remote areas of European Arctic Russia. The northern winter is a time for gathering round a fire to find comfort and delight in sharing stories and food. The unfinished stories in A Forest Tale are collectively made, words in motion, fashioned by hand, voice and long experience, tales of a place through time. Time here is elastic, playing backwards and forwards, as people and forest hold out against present threats including climate change, industrial logging and political adventurism, working to survive and flourish in the future. The trees – larch, pine, fir and birch – and forests are the matter and world of these stories and lives, incarnate in the houses, tools, artefacts, food and heat.
“While A Forest Tale was being filmed, Russia was assembling thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine, and a sense of foreboding was in the air. We spoke of our fears of what might be about to happen. But the film was finished before the invasion of Ukraine, and therefore it seems important to let the voices and places of that moment speak for themselves, and not distort them with hindsight. Something good happened in that little corner of Russia, though the war can make it hard for people to appreciate that anymore. A film, at least for its duration, replays that elastic time again, conjuring a ‘what if’ to replace the desperate feeling of ‘if only’.”
A Forest Tale was produced in collaboration with the Arctic Art Institute and Film and Video Umbrella (funded by Arts Council England).
A Forest Tale is on view till 1 April 2023.
About the artist
Ruth Maclennan (b. London, 1969) is an artist and writer. Her work includes films, multi-channel moving image works, photographs, performances and writing. Her recent films examine how the climate emergency has irrevocably transformed ways of seeing and understanding landscape and place – both for inhabitants, and as representation.
Maclennan exhibits widely internationally. Since April 2020 she has contributed to the international collective, The Crown Letter. She is known for her films set in post-Soviet countries, including Call of North, Hero City and Cloudberries, filmed in Arctic Russia (London International Film Festival), Theodosia, filmed in Crimea a year before its annexation by Russia (supported by a Joanna Drew Travel Award), and Capital and Anarcadia, filmed in Kazakhstan. Exhibitions include Icebreaker Dreaming (solo, Pushkin House), Anarcadia (solo, FVU/John Hansard Gallery), Terrapolis (French School, Athens), State of Mind (London School of Economics), and The Body. The Ruin (Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne). She has a PhD from the Royal College of Art and is Institute Associate at Scott Polar Institute, University of Cambridge. Her films are distributed by LUX.