Cacher et Voir, Elliott Chemena’s 12 minute 8 millimeter study of a Japanese garden near the Hague, offers us an elegant portrait of a beautiful place. We get to know the garden in two different seasons, first in the spring, and then fall. The grainy quality of the film print recalls the tactile feel of Japanese brush paintings. Although the garden is periodically open to the public, in the film, a heron and a goat are the only inhabitants. The electronic score, by John Elliot, combines bell-like tones with longer, sustained notes. The music creates a hushed, magical sense of a place where quiet moments of beauty are continually revealed.
The garden is designed to carefully evoke the flowing forms of nature, but it does so in a highly formal way: the tortuous branches of cherry trees are carefully set apart, contrasting with the bushy abundance of Japanese maples behind them. A flowing stream marks a definite boundary, and is accented with a tiny, curved bridge. There are carefully placed small shrines and sacred sculptures, which exemplify the Japanese idea of a garden as an ideal place for spiritual contemplation.
At times, the intensely saturated green of the dense foliage in the spring sections, accentuated by the film stock, makes the images feel almost under-water. By contrast, the Fall footage, with partially bare branches and dry fallen leaves, feels altogether lighter, drier, and more open. Brown mushrooms have sprung up among the grass. Since both sections are comprised of the same places, the same shrines, groves, streams, the seasonal differences in the light and the color palette are striking.
Chemana's calm, hand-held camerawork guides the film, and his curious eye is attuned to the contemplative mood of the garden. Much of the film is concerned with things seen through other things: sunlight or clouds through the leaves, flowering shrubs seen through a grove of trees with twisted trunks, Buddha figures seen within small shrines. The garden design invites the visitor to explore, to walk around and discover hidden treasures. As the title suggests, small, unexpected delights are constantly coming into view. Chemana’s garden portrait does not merely show us what the garden looks like, it captures the textures, rhythms, and heightened sensuality of time spent there.
My articles on experimental film are freely available to all, but are supported by monthly and annual donations from readers. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work. Thank you.