Student filmmakers to attend prestigious Munich Film Festival with ‘Plant Speech’
A short film by two students from UWI St Augustine will be screened at Filmschoolfest Munich, a prestigious international student film festival in Germany.
Lee Anna Maharaj, 22, and Jovan Lalla, 25, created the three-minute experimental film Plant Speech that imagines what plants sound like when they talk.
The film shows a black microphone recording the sounds of various plants such as a pawpaw tree, palm tree, weeds and aloe vera. It was done for the class Sound and Visual Dynamics, taught by UWI film lecturer Andreas Antonopoulos.
Maharaj told UWI TODAY that she loves the outdoors. She’s always taking pictures of trees and she wanted to do something with nature. Lalla is more into sound effects, and the two combined their passions to create Plant Speech.
“We thought, ‘what if we had a device that could listen to plants and they could speak to us?’” she said.
The plants do not speak English or any other human language. The students wanted the sounds to be an experience for the audience to interpret however they wanted.
“It is nothing that could be translated,” she said in reference to the plants’ speech. “It’s not really like words. It’s more like sounds. I don’t have any words to describe how the plants talk. It is not of this world. It’s alien-like. They have their own language.”
Maharaj filmed common household plants in her grandparents’ back yard in Arouca. She asked herself ‘what would they say if they could talk?’
Plant Speech, she said, was made to help people appreciate plants.
“Sometimes we just see them there. We don’t take the time to admire and appreciate them. We don’t acknowledge the plants. This film is to say: ‘I see you. I want to hear you.’”
Maharaj is graduating this year with a BA in Communication Studies and a minor in Film Studies. She’s not sure what she wants to do yet career wise, but hopes she can incorporate her film studies in her work.
Lalla was stunned that their movie was chosen:
“I wasn’t expecting that film to be chosen because it is pretty short. The concept is pretty simple.... It does not follow a narrative structure with a character and plot line....We were free styling.”
He is going into his fourth year at UWI and is majoring in Film Production. He is interested in sound design.
While doing research, Lalla learned that plants actually make sounds, but it requires sophisticated equipment to hear them.
“The plants have their own systems that make sounds like the water systems. It is not a form of communication, but some things just make sounds and you need a good enough microphone to hear. Through the research, I realised I could make the plants do the sounds.”
He used a tool on Adobe Audition to edit sounds and generate tones he thought suited to the plants.
“If there was a tiny weed that looked scraggly, I gave it an aggressive sound,” he said.
Though he looked at the plant and tried to give a good guess on what the plant would sound like, he didn’t want to give it too much of a personality. He would rather leave the sounds up to interpretation so that each viewer could get something different out of the film.
The aloe vera plant, however, was the sole exception to his rule:
“The aloes sound a bit mystical and whimsical, like a hum. It is a relaxed plant, and it also is valued out of all the plants. I would have given that plant a little more subjectivity because I liked it more. It sounded more human because of the hum.”
He made the hum out of his own voice.
Antonopoulos said he was impressed at the student’s creativity:
“Their idea is just amazing because no one thought in the past to do that. It was a fine and authentic idea.”
He submitted four of the class’s films and Plant Speech was chosen.
Yao Ramesar, head of the Film Department, said he was proud of the students but not surprised by their success. Over the years, the Film Programme’s alumni have been doing well and their movies are well-received internationally.
“It is great news, but not unexpected. Munich is the number one festival for student films. It is a gateway for Academy Award nominations for short films. So it is very good news,” he said.
Filmschoolfest is taking place from November 14 to 20. The festival is giving the students accommodation and one plane ticket, and UWI will cover half of the expenses for their trip to Germany.
For more information on Filmschoolfest, visit https://www.filmschoolfest-munich.de/en/
