Fainting Spells

Xawiska. Indian Pipe Plant. Monotropa uniflora. Ghost or Corpse plant. In Fainting Spells, a “walk through the spirit world” of the Ho-Chunk (a Native American tribe), Xawiska is also a person, a creature, a being. Xawiska works on the nervous system, so the film responds accordingly, with poetic, handwritten text passing along the screen in lines, vividly treated colour imagery, pictorial distortions, and a mysterious, shrouded body rendered thermically. Other glimpses (of somebody adjusting a TV monitor) and sounds (the plaintive song “Go My Son”, flute loops) remove us from this trance, creating an Apichatpong Weerasethakul-style conceptual collage. (Viennale)