Uncovering the past: a review of Ruth Höflich’s ‘Plant (879 Pages, 33 Days)’ — Film Friday

A subtly impactful short film which comes highly recommended.

After receiving a press pass from the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) for the February 2021 edition of their annual week-long event, I have written reviews for Bournbrook magazine of entries to the festival’s Ammodo Tiger Short competition, many of which are experimental in design, and play with a range of cinematic forms and ideas.

One of the most interesting films that I’ve seen at the IFFR this year, Ruth Höflich’s Plant (879 Pages, 33 Days) presents a narrated discussion between Hölflich herself and her mother on the subject of an 18th century witch trial which took place in a property owned by their family.

Unsurprisingly given the theme, the film pays due homage to Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s seminal 1999 supernatural documentary-style film, The Blair Witch Project, about a group of students who go missing in the woods in search of the witch legend. 

Credit: IFFR

Like The Blair Witch Project, the suspense of Höflich’s film is created in that which is not seen and merely suggested. The sharp contrasting sounds of nature, the cutting of scissors, and office machinery, coupled with ghostly images of people and dark vacant buildings, as well as spiders and insects, appropriately unnerve the viewer. 

Fitting in with a prominent theme of this year’s IFFR selection, Plant (879 Pages, 33 Days) deals with the subject of women. Women of different generations but of the same family, talking together, in the first instance. There is also the subject of women unjustly accused of witchcraft in the distant past and executed for heresy, and the uncovering of that past by modern women.

A subtly impactful short film which comes highly recommended.