Experiencing Interruptions?

Natural Stream

Natural Stream is an attempt to reproduce through actual photographs environments resembling what the earth was like before our arrival and recreate a journey through the different stages of our planet's existence. A harmonious flow of photographs, taken in different regions of the globe, reveals, in astonishing parallels, the complexity of nature´s evolutionary structures in all its realms; fauna, flora, and mineral. A meditative experience inviting our reflection about our common origin and intrinsic connection with all there is around us. Human beings’ appearance in the last moment of the blue planet’s history represent only a nanosecond of its millions of years of existence. What do we mean for the Earth’s further evolution and survival?

  • Gabriela Torres Ruiz
    Director
  • Rosangela de Araujo
    Director
    Driving Alone, Contemplation, Breakable Sea
  • Gabriela Torres Ruiz
    Writer
  • Andrés Jankowski
    Music
    chromatics, Bellini, ciudad lineal, Onkoh, autre monde
  • Gabriela Torres Ruiz
    Producer
  • Gabriela Torres Ruiz
    Photography
  • Rosangela de Araujo
    Editing
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Narrative, Poetic, Observational, Reflexive, Expository
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 9, 2021
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada, Cuba, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, still photography
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Gabriela Torres Ruiz
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Gabriela Torres Ruiz, Rosangela de Araujo

Gabriela Torres Ruiz - Born in 1970 in Mexico City. Received a scholarship to study architecture at the Cracow University of Technology, Poland. Graduated in 1998. She moved to Berlin in 1996, where she worked as an architect in the office Kleihues + Kleihues until 2013. 2001 began as autodidact with black and white photography. 2007 assists the photographer Stefan Müller (Architecture photography), Berlin. From 2006 to 2014 she worked in theater photography. 2013 decided to focus solely on art and photography. From 2014 to 2016 mentoring by Timothy Persons (Professor at Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland). 2019 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019, for the publication Silence, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Gemany. 2020 nominated full member of the German Society for Photography, DGPh, proposed by Mr. Ditmar Schädel (Chairman of the DGPh)

Rosangela de Araujo - Born in Rio de Janeiro. In 1986 she graduated in Visual Communication in the Escola de Belas Artes, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, under Rui de Oliveira. In de Oliveira's animated film "Cristo Procurado" (1990), which won several awards, she participated as an animator and assistant director. In 1992 she received a CAPES grant to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where she studied under Jules Engel, Maureen Selwood, Vibeke Sorensen, Christine Panushka and William Moritz. In 1996 she moved to Berlin where she works as a freelance writer, illustrator, graphic designer and filmmaker. Since 1998 she has been teaching Experimental Animation Film at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf and others. Since 2006 she has been working as a scriptwriter for animated TV series. Her animated film Driving Alone has been screened at festivals worldwide, received the Kite Award for Best Short Film for Youth in Buenos Aires, and was named The best and award winning films from NYICFF 2005-2007 by New York Children International Festival. Her article Storytelling Threads appeared in Short Film Studies, peer-reviewed journal, by Intellect Books, UK. At IWA 2018 symposium In Wirklichkeit Animation... of the AG Animation of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft e.V., St. Pölten, Austria she presents her paper A Slice of Time Back into the Timeline: Some Considerations on Visual Rhythm in Animated Photography. In the same year she was a speaker at Gender in Animation Symposium in Festival Animation Berlin.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Gabriela Torres Ruiz - What interests me most about the medium of photography is the ambiguity of an image, the feeling of seeing something with an infinite number of meanings. Thus, photography allows us to abstract parts of what we call "reality" and create new figurative and conceptual realities. Memory is composed of fragmented images that have much to do with our subjectivity: a partial view of reality.

My photographic work is based on the act of collecting and rearranging images from my own archive, which serves to create new associations. My way of creating visual essays evolves around my own doubts and curiosities about the mysteries I encounter in the world, through my own personal experiences and interpretations.

The way we archive images becomes our memory and gives them a new meaning. By isolating a fragment of reality, it becomes an independent entity. When we accumulate a large collection of isolated images, we create islands or constellations, forming a new set in which the images depend on each other without losing their autonomy. When we look at these images without specific narrative evidence, we can see the way in which everything can be subtly connected, despite its physical or metaphorical isolation. It is this fragmented harmony or free association that we use that can create unexpected sensations and ideas in ourselves and in the viewer.