To Shake and Disturb and Bring Us Back to Ourselves
2020 - Film: 08:34 - Rhiana Bonterre
Rhiana Bonterre is a graduating BA Filmmaking student at Kingston School of Art, London (2021).
Her films focus on themes involving the Caribbean and it’s diaspora, as well as personal, social and cultural identity. Her work has been screened at the British Film Institute, and as she continues to produce films, she intends to draw much of her inspiration from her own experiences in Trinidad where she grew up, past and present ideologies that shape its culture, and the vast and differing experiences of people who come from the Caribbean. Her film 'I am' (2019) was screened at the British Film Institute and 'Silent Truths' (2019) was selected and exhibited at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2020.
https://rhianabonterre.myportfolio.com/
‘To Shake and Disturb and Bring Us Back to Ourselves’
Text by Patrycja Loranc
“To Shake and Disturb and Bring Us Back to Ourselves” is Rhiana Bonterre’s experimental film with elements of documentary, which explores the theme of spiritual connection through ways sensitive to individual and collective emotions. As the filmmaker describes herself: “guided by a variety of voices, the necessity for global black liberation becomes all the more urgent.” Fragments of interviews and a poetically written monologue layer the film with many meanings, and the verbally inexpressible is captured by dynamic interpretative dance seen throughout the film, and music. I’ll look at Rhiana’s film from a personal perspective, hopefully encouraging the viewer to notice and appreciate how all the elements come together to present fragments of stories which feel deeply personal and together compose an image of interconnectedness and a collectivity of emotional states.
The dancers in the film seem to be a grounding unification of the voices heard, the movement is used to express emotions ranging from anger, confusion, desire, hope, peace, while the ever- changing flow of times can be noted in the blur, delay and superimposition of the restless shapes. Not only transience of existence can be found in the use of these techniques and skilled movements of Nana Appiah and Seana McNally, but the changes in dynamics are reflective of the states of mind (or heart) portrayed in different moments. The film steers from night to early morning, as if suggesting the hope for change for the better, as well as acknowledging the balance of nature itself, which never fails to provide both sides of an experience: sadness, uncertainty, and joy, peace, unification. Natural environment is a recurring element in Rhiana’s practice, and in this piece I think it’s especially strongly evocative of a connection that we tend to omit in the rush and in the mechanical character of modern life, nature as something we can find balance in, something perhaps reflective of our emotionality in its rapid and flowing changes. It also seems to convey the message that we, as humans, are all connected through nature, the Earth, our common environment, which was also shared by the ones who lived here before us.
“There were sad tales and there were happy tales” says Rhiana’s mum, Cornelia Bonterre, in the section which delves into fragments of family history and Jamaican heritage. The acknowledgement of the depth and complexity of human nature is evident in these moments. The memories recalled over filmed still photographs in this section of the film again evoke the spiritual relationships with places and spaces from which we came - one’s connection to the ancestral history.
I find that, through the film as a medium, we are often able to react on a profound personal level to stories which we observe - as if our emotions were located, deeply emphatically, in the same centre as the emotions of the subject - the character, the narrator, the filmmaker, thus allowing us to learn, to conclude, as we, in a way, become an active part of the story told - what will we do with what is being put before us? Personal reactions being triggered by an experience which engages only our vision and hearing, often without a direct reference to our own memory, provokes me to inevitably think about how cinematic experience, and this film in particular, interacts with the very connections that are its theme - a unity often imperceivable in our everyday lives.
Considering the audiovisual medium’s potential to affect our senses and, through them, our consciousness, Rhiana’s film takes me as a viewer into a world captivatingly beautiful in all its aspects, and I connect to the voices intensified with feelings of unity, with oneself as well as with the environment within which we live, and other human beings, to gradually suddenly be hit by the anger, frustration, with perpetuating, unspeakable injustices which through centuries had led to people not being able to recognise, appreciate, or respect these connections anymore, not to mention one another. The title: “To shake and disturb and bring us back to ourselves”, manages to indicate the importance of many kinds of change: social and political, as well as change on personal level, in exploration of one’s sense of identity and belonging, one’s source of strength.
I’d like to mention the film’s wonderful soundtrack, which consists of steelpan compositions - the use of the instrument native to Trinidad and Tobago, where Rhiana is from, further signifies the care taken for all the elements to be parts of the narrative. Although the film is heard through voices of several different women, talking about their experiences, each has a heart-gripping, particular energy - each individual voice, as well as each dancer, become essential parts of the film’s body.
This suggests the strength of individual personalities unified in a collective expression of the worry, the desire for peace, but also in the certainty that flows from exploring the spiritual heritage, the ancestral identity of which one is another incarnation.
The are many issues this film brings together, just as many aspects of life meet together in one’s unique personality. The potent language of the work’s aesthetic and movement is supported by subtlety and sensitivity with which these experiences are brought forward, and that, I believe, increases the emotional impact of the film.
Read Rhiana’s essay on Patrycja Loranc’s work HERE.
