SHORT FILM

After Betelgeuse

by Len Murusalu
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World War II, mass deportations to Siberia and marginalization during the Russian occupation caused the extinction of the language of the indigenous people of Livonia. Narrated in Livonian and inspired by a folk song and Finnic mythology, Len's film seeks hope in perishing times and memories forgotten.

In early 2018, artist and filmmaker Len Murusalu heard the Livonian folk song "Sadā, vīmo" (Pour, you rain)', whose lyrics she understood despite the language itself being unfamiliar to her. Inspired by this experience, and by her curiosity about the historical dynamics that endanger small languages, she made After Betelgeuse. In this film, the protagonist navigates a landscape transformed by cosmic events, guided by the folk song. The sounds and lyrics of "Sadā, vīmo" become the channel to connect to ancestors, and the compass to traverse space and time as the traveler in the film seeks refuge for threatened memories.   

The film is narrated in Livonian, a language declared dormant in 2013. Livonia was once an economically powerful region during medieval times in present-day Latvia and Estonia. But today, the last historical Livonian villages are on a sandy beach strip on cape Kolka in northern Latvia —World War II, mass deportations to Siberia and marginalization during the Russian occupation drove the language and culture of the indigenous Livonian people to near extinction. As Mixe linguist Yásnaya Aguilar Gil says: 'languages don't die, languages get killed.' 

Yet, despite the atrocities of the Russian occupation, here is a filmmaker, years later, whose body recognizes a Livonian song without her even knowing it. 'If language is a key to understanding culture, —she says— how much universal, wordless recognition exists within us due to similar folkloric traditions, familiar soundscapes, or a shared sense of nature?' This wordless recognition Len speaks of is akin to mythologist Martin Shaw's interpretation of myth as a form of echolocation of the land: 'Earth transmits pulses, coded information, lucid images and then sits back to see what echoes return from its messaging.' While Len's film is concerned with historical events, it chooses to stay loyal to the mythic and poetic forms of storytelling of the geographical region, giving life to those echoes that might find, now or in the future, a sense of recognition in other bodies.

In After Betelgeuse, landscape's communication happens at a deep perceptual level that transcends words, and thus requires us to attune with our bodies' innate capacity to pick up on these signals. The film blurs the distinction between world, body and language. It is all woven together: language is a gesture of the land traveling across time through the bodies that inhabit it, a familiar soundscape that gives the protagonist a sense of guidance and belonging as they navigate yet undefinable events in a rapidly changing world. 

From this perspective, the sense of loss that occurs when language and cultural expression disappear is not metaphorical, but an actual rupture of the resonating pulses between body and land, and the world-navigating abilities that that relationship enables. Yet the story here is one of hope, as Len says: "as long as there are those who remember, can anything truly be considered extinct?" In the film, the traveler needs a song to make their journey to a safe place, maybe that is the kind of map we all need in times of cosmic events, letting the songs of our lands guide us.

CREDITS

Director
Len Murusalu

Text
Alessandra Baltodano

2022. Estonia

Published in December, 2024
Volume 9, Issue 10

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