Opening in NYC next Wednesday, December 22: THE SOUND OF INSECTS: RECORD OF A MUMMY
Peter Liechti’s unusual, experimental documentary essay premiered at Rotterdam last year and has played a number of notable international festivals, including Hot Docs, Silverdocs, Karlovy Vary, Vancouver, CPH:DOX, SXSW, and Thessaloniki. It won the 2009 Best Documentary Award at the European Film Awards, and was acquired by Kino Lorber films for the US earlier this year.
An audio recording of Shimada Masahiko’s novella “How I Became a Mummy” inspired Liechti to make his film, telling the story of a man who committed suicide by starving himself in the woods over two months. Taking the man’s viewpoint, THE SOUND OF INSECTS visually focuses on his natural surroundings and the shelter he constructed for himself in his last days, while the audio is a haunting mixture of nature sounds and his diary entries. Based as it is on a fictional interpretation of a supposed true occurrence (Shimada Mashiko apparently saw an actual diary which inspired his story, but Liechti never did), it’s a film that some viewers might justifiably see as not strictly a work of non-fiction, or at least not entirely a work of non-fiction. At the same time, like other not-quite-documentaries, or questionable documentaries, the questions it raises about the documentary form, and about the role of “truth” in documentary filmmaker, make for fascinating consideration.
what (not) to doc 