This short film tells a story involving memory, dreams, solitude, and the feeling of home.
It draws from solo travels around the Carpathian Mountains region from before I was found by a traveling caravan. Shot on location in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Act I - the dream of the source
Act II - an experiment in escape
Act III - the wilderness of lost memory
Act IV - the source of the dream
“Foot of the Carpathians” features photography and writing by Eric Pan, and is scored by the song of the same name. Heartfelt gratitude to Chris Marker’s “La Jetée”, Bhavna Shivayogimath, The Final Challenge, and Aneta.
The song comes from the wilderness. Olena and Marko found me aimless and wandering in Krakow, which somehow led, two days later, to an evening spent by the Western Carpathian mountains surrounded by a larger group of their friends. Guitars around a campfire, melodies sung into the night. After leaving them, I wrote the main theme in trying to capture the mood we’d found.
I forgot about the song until a year later, when it seemed a good idea to collect all the “postcard” songs composed during journeys afar. Many of the themes seemed to want to stay simple and untouched, but “Foot of the Carpathians” presented a deeper mystery. I felt it was worth trying to expand the track’s primary statement into a few different but related harmonies, and introduce it to Nir Sabag (drums) and Hugo Reydet (bass) with room for melodic and rhythmic improvisation. I hoped a trio in musical conversation would be fitting for a song born from a small gathering.
We, together with longtime production friends Virgil Segal and Brian Trahan, recorded the track at TRIXX Studios with Fabio Buemi. The soundscapes were meticulously scored later, the primary contributions here being recordings of a Tibetan singing bowl, made in Duisburg, tuned to the frequency of the asteroid Ceres.
Found sound credits: spt3125, stefanhoevenaar, colinsullivan, unfa, felix-blume
Mastering by Ruairi O’Flaherty at Nomograph Mastering.
Further lore can be found at the “Foot of the Carpathians” photo collection of 1/1s on Tezos: http://objkt.com/collections/KT1UuPuGNM7KgbwbsQ9XKiXDhVmdJn4gjhn6
And the “Foot of the Carpathians” audio edition on Sound: https://www.sound.xyz/pandelic/foot-of-the-carpathians