A fascinating fusion of documentary, poetry and theatre, Stones Have Laws is the result of a collaboration between artists Van Brummelen & De Haan, co-director Tolin Erwin Alexander and the Maroon community of the former Dutch colony of Suriname, South America. Through haunting songs, oral histories and enacted scenes, the film explores the legacy of slavery, and the ritual and folk stories attached to lives lived by the rhythm and law of the forest.
It’s languid, immersive and hypnotic. Long periods of silence, punctuated by the metallic rattle of insects, allow the audience to soak in the atmosphere. But once these seemingly timeless cadences have started to weave their spell, the film-makers reveal just how precariously balanced life is on a land that is plundered by the multinational corporations laying claim to it.
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