Reflective Encounters

“Daniela Sherer’s Peregrine opens with a quote from J.A. Baker - who wrote the non-fiction book of the same name - which serves as a key to understanding the abstraction which follows. It’s a short film about transfiguration and change, of what is lost but what is gained, and how forms merge into each other to produce new ones. The titular bird of prey inspires such awe in the viewer that the past seems to rise up before us, albeit one which is shattered once the hawk has flown away.

Peregrine serves as a beautiful evocation of the conflict between nature and civilization, but also of the potential for symbiosis which humanity so often jeopardises. The simple black-and-white design blends ancient columns with leaves from tree, with the hawk itself rendered as a simple semi-circle which moves through the blank space. The effect is like chalk on a blackboard, the figures floating without any specificity of time or place.

The focus of Sherer’s film is on the perspective of the beholder who looks first through binoculars and later with their naked eye. We reflect on the impermanence of things by contrast to the constancy of the natural world, and of how we should value and protect it.”

— Lillian Crawford