Dirs: Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan | Doc, India. 81’
The world of moths is probed in this peaceful and poetic new documentary set in the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas on the border of Bhutan and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh where their life spins on the phases of the moon.
For just ten days leading up the new moon these mysterious nocturnal creatures whizz frenetically in all directions drinking the nectar of flowers. All this activity is to generate heat.
Filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan try to identify the moths as thry settle on a bluish softly glowing light screen during the hours of darkness. What emerges is a hazy tableau buzzing with life of different shapes and sizes.
Meanwhile back in the lab the ecologists must try and make sense of why so many moths species use the nighttime to engage in their vital life process. What they do know is that for the last 300 million years the hardy creatures have held our planet together. There are so many different species,, around 160,000 compared to 17,500 types of butterflies. Sadly they are often considered poor relations of their butterfly cousins. Yet adorned with silvery wings and striking colours they have a distinct allure of their own and follow the moon guided by its phases as they go about their nighttime forays for food.
Lulled by a gossamer often eerie score of ambient – sounds of the forest that vibrates with all kinds of life from birds to elephants, this is very much a sensory film and you may drift off into a pleasant reverie.
In the soothing nocturnal soundscape, Manis a quantitative ecologist, leads a mission to take stock and catalogue every type of Himalayan moth in order to better understand the impact of so-called climate change. With her assistant Bicki, who belongs to the indigenous Bugun community, she has decided to focus on the hawkmoth. With digital cameras the two start to photograph the moths as they are drawn into the light. There’s a strange allure to the Death’s-head hawkmoth, so called because its upper thorax resembles a skull.
A beguiling film that once again showcases the stunning biodiversity of the natural world celebrated by two pioneering ecological filmmakers. @MeredithTaylor
NOCTURES won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at SUNDANCE 2024