Kārlis Bergs: Weeping Rocks
Co-director: Andrew Siedenburg.
Allow me first to take a shortcut to the precise and inviting synopsis provided by IDFA, where the film in November was selected for the Luminous section, after that I give you a personal view on the film:
“Seventy-nine-year-old entomologist Art Shapiro has spent 53 years researching the biodiversity of Central California by recording butterfly populations. His method is also known as slow science: he has been repeating the same walks for decades. This has enabled him to record an alarming decline in butterfly numbers.
In Weeping Rocks, directors Karlis Bergs and Andrew Siedenburg literally follow in Shapiro’s footsteps. They join him on his walks, observing him in the same way he studies changes in nature. His wife calls him “an exaggerated form of a human.” This seems to be confirmed when the camera captures his collection of butterflies, meticulously pinned and catalogued.
Shapiro’s world revolves around fixed patterns, but even he can’t escape the transformations taking place—California’s increasingly severe wildfires, as well as his own deteriorating health. He remains admirably down to earth in his observations: “Fifty years isn’t enough for me to understand what the fuck is going on.” Weeping Rocks is thus a reflection on the passage of time and the acceptance of change.”
I am 78 and as Art I have a passion, documentaries, and I could easily bring his observation to be mine: “Fifty years isn´t enough to understand what… a documentary is”. When I have been teaching at film schools, I have often asked for help from the students asking “What is a documentary, give me 3 words that come to your mind…”.
This passion has brought me to love many kinds of documentaries, including the slow cinema docs, personal, observational, warm in tone, avoiding sensationalism, taking its time. Ileana Stanculescu, Georgian/Romanian, film and festival director from Tbilisi, with whom I have been working for years, told me time ago that she thought this would be a film for me, knowing my flair for Latvian documentaries.
Kārlis Bergs is from Latvia, lives now in the US, and right Ileana is, the film has definitely a Latvian touch, if you can say so, I could easily include it in the Baltic School for Poetic Documentary: In the way the director looks at his protagonist, with respect and understanding of what it means to be dedicated and engaged, to let him give the viewer his love to nature and especially the butterflies – he has the biggest collection in the world, registered! Apart from that the film takes some cinematic lyrical tours in the nature following Art’s walking, the weeping rocks – water that comes down from melting snow, the young boys jumping from rocks down to the river, the mountain landscapes… Camera by the director and Alex Kurbatov, who (words of the director) “worked on Weeping Rocks for almost a year. Tragically in January 2020, Alex passed away. This film would not have been what it is without him. Alex’s energy, positivity, and curiosity was the driving force behind our shoots”.
Art is getting old and he has to retire from his university job, that’s the rule, and the health is not the best, his constant walking caught by the camera shows that. Art gives himself time to write biographical notes, and the filmmaker takes text excepts to bring to us viewers – a brilliant move – reflections on how life goes for the young man of 89!
Wonderful film and the side effect, an inspiration as well for me, when the family move to the allotment in spring, Butterfly watching”.
USA, Latvia, 2025, 88 mins.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
