-5°C 40% rF

A green brown landscape autumnally shimmers through veils of snow, irritating and strangely two-dimensional, resembling a stage backdrop that serves as the static background for a vaporous curtain billowing in the foreground. Whirled about by strong gusts of wind, the snowfall assumes ever changing patterns. Layers of snow form and billows swirl, swaths of snow rhythmically drift through the image like smoke. Sometimes the density of dots and lines constituting the flurries is reminiscent of the "snowy" picture interference on an old television. The focus fluctuates between abstractly turbulent surfaces and blurred painterly views of a forest. The conscious omission of sound, even atmospheric sound, heightens the staged impression and artificiality of the natural spectacle.

The long shot at the end of the film makes evident what the title had already indicated: This snow is not natural – during the film shoot it was created at a temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 40% by a snow cannon which fired it into nature. Nature itself appears strangely indifferent to this intrusion, almost stubborn: As strenuously as the machines blow their ice crystals out into the forest, only a few sad piles of snow ultimately remain in the autumnal landscape to indicate a ski run.

The film develops a playful commentary about artificially and artistically altered natural environments. Here the landscape becomes the medium, reporting on the relation of nature to culture and commenting on their staging. (Andrea Pollach)

Translation: Eve Heller