Before Sandstorm & Mud

Programme

• Before Sandstorm

  In a vast expanse of desert sands two men exchange health tips: “Wild boar meat is good for your lungs,” says one. “Wild boars and groundhogs,” replies the other. They press bunches of straw into the sand to combat the desertification and sandstorms here in the Tengger Desert of northwest China. A little later we see other people, men and women, doing the same work.
  
  In this immense swathe of sand—the Tengger is about the size of the Netherlands— their labor looks like a Sisyphean task. Perhaps it is due to the resulting sense of pointlessness that the conversations start to take on a more serious tone. One of the two men tells of how his wife left him, and how he had to raise his child alone. He once envisioned a different kind of life, but things go as they go. “Our fate is like an unbreakable wall,” he observes, with a resigned tone. After a long day, he and the other workers are picked up by a tractor and trailer. Tomorrow will bring another day in the hot desert under the clear blue sky.

• Mud

  To the aural accompaniment of sloshing mud and gurgling water, Russians soak themselves in the curative mud baths of a historic spa. It is October 2022, and the war in Ukraine has been underway for seven months. This place, however, seems completely unaffected. Before visitors can enjoy the benefits of being packed in mud, they have to deal with a complex jumble of prohibitions, stamps, voucher systems, and other bureaucratic hoops and hurdles. Mud is a black-and-white dreamscape without any interviews or commentary. Harsh reality makes its presence felt only occasionally via short news clips on a smartphone, a TV news broadcast quickly zapped away to a gameshow with Soviet songs, and soldiers silently taking mud baths. The film switches between activities behind the scenes and front-of-house—in machine and treatment rooms—and impressionistic still lifes of empty corridors and people relaxing. This microcosm of a health spa becomes an allegory of contemporary Russia, with mud rituals and curative baths assuaging potential social unrest, and ultra-detailed surveillance silencing any possibly rebellious individuals.