Paraíso

An impressionistic picture of Colombia rendered in Super 8 and by the noise produced by images: a walking man becomes his footsteps, the construction of a house a turning cement mixer, while a rose is the rustle of falling petals and the forest the buzzing of insects. Then there is the wind and sea. Alternating black and white and colour footage, the camera-cars take in bidonvilles and traffic scenes, while from the archives there emerge clips of military parades and of life in the forest. The few spoken words are snatches of poetry from the Colombian Nadaism tradition. The fragmentary nature of the editing and music depict contemporary Colombia as a paraíso that is hard to explain.