Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: ARCHIPELAGO [Denver Film Festival 2021- Virtual]

The idea of modern or created floats through the identity of the almost dreamlike and poetic "Archipelago" which is a rumination in disjointed form about the essence of islands and where their position in the ideal of history is. Land changes and yet remains the same. The dialogue for the most part is interspersed between different reinterpretations of old newsreels and black and white footage of various islands mostly it seems in French Quebec. The imagery and dialogue talk about the darkness and light that happens in certain ways of thinking. Sometimes the animation and the ideas bend more towards the primal like two animals fighting over a piece of meat. Sometimes the verses talk about the meaning of the land and how perhaps the birds that live there can see things that we can't. The metaphors also talk about being incomplete and whole at the same time which can also give the film's disjointed story an idea of existentialism. Why do these islands exist apart from one other but what do they mean to the greater whole?

The approach and inference can be as simple as a family getting together for a meal or going for a swim. Politics and why a place is either conquered or given over to different rule seems to permeate the discussion of the male and female voices that talk back and forth throughout. These voices are at times unsure of themselves and then at others are resolutely self aware in their countenance. While this is for the most part a metaphorical exercise, it does leave a lot of the ideas up to interpretation including those of religious intent. "Archipelago" is a bit more experimental than most propping itself up on an ethereal experience of stream of consciousness form which sees itself, for the most part, as anything it might want yet never moves itself to a coalesced perspective. C

By Tim Wassberg