Trees Whisper

"We are the Hollow Men,
We are the Stuffed Men..."
T.S. Elliot

Trees Whisper is a primitive movement performance where the dancer improvises on words of Poetry. She dances in a natural landscape, literally in a tree hole, standing on a rock, where Mother Nature always watches the works of Men - the wars, the killing, the injustice - but stays mysteriously silent.

Or… Does she?...

Maybe the answer leans on the secret healing that she provides us every time we return to her.

  • Alkistis Voulgari
    Director
  • Allen Ginsberg "Footnote to Howl" & "The Howl"
    Writer
  • T.S. Elliot "The Hollow Men"
    Writer
  • Room 37 Artworks
    Producer
  • Alkistis Voulgari
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Completion Date:
    December 9, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    Greece
  • Country of Filming:
    Greece
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    9:16
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 26th International Multimedial Art Festival - IMAF 2024 - Live Performance
    Novi Sad
    Serbia
    September 7, 2024
    Live performance
    Official Invitation
Director Biography - Alkistis Voulgari

Alkistis Voulgari was born in Athens. She is an actress and dancer specializing in Isadora Duncan’s Dance Technique.

The last three years she started experimenting on her own film and performance creations which embrace Theatre, Poetry, Literature, Dance and Radio Art.

Her work has been presented in many different countries, in festivals, exhibitions and theatres as the Short film Panorama and Academia Romantica of Athens, Avatar Center and Porcovete Pictures in Canada, UNU – Flores and Technische Sammlungen in Dresden, International Multimedia Art Festival in Serbia, Verti Films in Prague, On the Rocks Film festival in Italy, Museum of Dead Words in Brooklyn, NY.

She is gradually visualising and working on the reconnection of the Theatre with its natural roots by improvising and exploring the primitive idea in an open, natural space where the film camera becomes the "eye of the director" and an eternal narration of the theatrical, performative, human and life experience.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

First I saw the news.
The important Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer was killed on 7 December in Gaza.
Then I read one of his last poems. «If I must die» was the title.
I am in Greece. All this is happening a few steps away, - all this has been happening for centuries to the human race, but humanity is still deaf.
I wanted to do something and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl with his delirious, caustic speech came to mind. While looking through his recordings I came across the film of the same name made in 2010 and a clip of James Franko as Ginsberg reciting about Molloch, the monstrous god of capitalism.
As a corollary, I was reminded of the scene where Marlon Brando performs T.S. Elliot’s lyrics to Apocalypse Now : «We are the Hollow Men…»
I made a soundscape and matched it to one of the performances that I’m practicing out in nature.
It was like this huge, ancient tree was whispering these words, a human story, unchanged over the centuries and I was just reacting to their impact.
Marina Abramowitz, who established performance as a genre, said that she works almost metaphysically and instinctively in the composition of each new work.
For me, Refaat Alareer’s poem was the motivation for a creative association.
Perhaps, this huge, ancient tree, which «saw» the death of Refaat and countless other innocents, composed this performance.
Because Trees Whisper.
Inside
Through us.