Trip the light fantastic
Meg Hewings
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Travelling Light plays at Cinema du Parc
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Local doc travels the world with artists to understand the creative impulse
You might feel like quitting your desk job, donating all your worldly possessions and hoping on the next plane, train or automobile to Barcelona or Berlin or Brazil or Japan - or anywhere for that matter - after watching Travelling Light, a new local doc by Tamás Wormser. You might also decide that finger painting is really something you should try again. Travelling Light walks the walk, an itinerant film that follows five protagonists, nomads and artists all, as they tour the world and attempt to live their lives and art to the fullest. Delving into these worlds with them, the film travels the globe trying to uncover what dislocation and movement, risk and change do for the mind, body and spirit.
Dynamic and in constant motion, Wormser's film, which plays from April 4-10 at Cinema du Parc, intimately explores with each artist their rich relationship between freedom and attachment, creativity and travel. These are the humans who notice how a light refracts and beauty reigns; are willing to suffer pain and discomfort; see their body as their home; and who revel in the present flow.
Of course, in some cases, the film makes surprising turns. Take Lundo (from La Chango Family), an articulate musician who describes his art as the struggle to reveal his true self to himself and the world. He and his partner and two young children travel with Chango Family on caravan-esque tours. Both wax poetic about the possibilities of a nomadic family life, despite the fact that by film's end
their lives and relationship have shifted dramatically. Change and risk are not the easy, comfortable paths, but they certainly do make for rich emotional worlds. Wormser also takes us into the wintery woods where László Kuli, a loner painter, lives in a makeshift hut. Kuli has never exhibited his work - incredibly textured, and vibrant abstract paintings - but he's inexplicably drawn to the creative process. The film follows him home to his communist-era cinderblock town. Meanwhile Nathalie Daoust, a photographer who physically manipulates analogue photographs, travels the world solo, moving from the streets of New York to the back alleys of the City of God in Brazil for her project on hotels and prostitutes.
Not all the artists are professional. Some make jewelry, others installation art or paintings. They don't have easy lives either, but they somehow appear effortless in the frame, dedicated to the moment and attuned to that magical "something" that happens when our creative souls are allowed to stretch out and play.
Using the art of his subjects to speak its own truth, Wormser's film is a collaborative sketchbook of sorts. And although we hear and see little of the director himself, except for his occasional quiet questioning behind the camera, in a way his film is an intimate yet collaborative process all its own... a testament to our insatiable human desire to chase beauty around every corner.
Travelling Light
At Cinema du Parc, April 4-10 at 9:30 p.m.
Director, Tamás Wormser, present for Q&A,
April 4, 5 and 7
