Trailer for Ekpyrosis.
The question is: How do you film a community that rejects the concept of nation, the values of modern civilization, the papacy, the army, the military service, the accumulation of wealth, and instead embraces rural work and a life of praying? We’re talking about more than a simple commitment to a creed or an ideology, we’re talking about accepting to be a part of a world created out of your own convictions, and eluding any coexistence with everything that’s different from that. How do you film this semi-limbo that has its own notion of time and history? This seems to be the question Nikolas Klement asks himself in his first film, a documentary that goes deep into a Mennonite community in La Pampa and portrays its everyday activities. Ekyprosis never picks up the countershot to “the others” –this is not a documentary that plays with contrasts. Klement’s interest never exceeds the limits of this settlement, and tries to capture a sense of tempo and montage, a perception of light and framing that stresses the state of extreme of physical, mental, and spiritual asceticism.