Convento

An artistic and quite off-beat Dutch family unit (a mother and two adult sons) live in an abandoned monastery in Portugal. We get a little back-story on their lives and how they got there, but mostly we focus on their lives in the here and now; the mother, an ex-prima ballerina, and then choreographer in Holland now spends her days gardening, so the family can largely live off the land. One son mostly cares for his horse ("my best friend") and the animals on the land, while the other creates surreal, complex, disturbing and fascinating kinetic sculptures made from dead animals brought to macabre, nightmarish life with gears, wires and some basic electronics.

The film doesn't dive deeply into their personalities or motives for their life choices, mostly letting us in by quietly observing – both the family and the beautiful location itself.

The pace is quite leisurely (too much so for me at times). I didn't find the film had a lot of emotional impact, I was sometimes frustrated by the lack of context, and by certain choices (for example; lingering too long on one artwork, not letting me see enough of another for my personal taste) but it was also quietly hypnotic, dream-like, and gently, amusingly thought- provoking - valuable qualities in themselves.

Convento is about a family of Dutch artists who live in an old monastery in Portugal. The film departs from the usual documentary approach and effectively operates as an art film in itself. The three central characters are only briefly sketched out; the main factor in the film is in capturing the location and the feel. Because the location is really quite bizarre and unique in the first place. Christian Zwanikken, one of the members of this family, has created an assortment of strange animated art works. They constitute of parts from dead animals, motorised by components conjoined to them. Sometimes they have odd aural accompaniments too. These weird creatures are by turns surreal and grotesque. What director Jarred Alterman has done here is to bring these strange components together and along with some ambient sounds has made a truly meditative piece of cinema. The film does not explain these people's motivations particularly, or look into their past very deeply. Instead it captures a feeling.

This is a quite beautifully photographed and sound-tracked documentary film. It will appeal much more to those who appreciate visual artistry though. Although some may find the mechanised dead animals quite disturbing. I found them to be consistently fascinating though, and the overall meditative tone of the piece was quite evocative at times. Definitely left-field but if you like it that way then give Convento a try.