TEMENOS A film by Nina Danino History of the Avant-Garde A series of video releases featuring the best of radical and innovative filmmaking from the first hundred years of cinema Temenos means a sacred site or ritual precinct. Temenos, the film explores the phenomenon of visionary experience. In the film we see locations where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared, including Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje in Croat-occupied Bosnia where the visions continue. Nina Danino films the landscapes that have witnessed these transcendental appearances, imbuing them with a sense of the sacred. These locations are both specific and unknown since viewers are never told where they are. Instead they are taken on a journey, during which they experience the raw exposure of emotion and the haunting voices of the soundtrack. The operatic soprano Catherine Bott, the Tuvan diva Sainkho Namchylak and the New York experimental vocalist Shelly Hirsch all deliver extraordinary performances. Across the landscape these voices weep bitterly, hum gently or give vent to unearthly sounds, sounds of nature, the screams of dementia or angelic arias. This is a film about haunting: a metaphysical thriller. UK, France | 1998 | colour and black & white | English narration | 77 minutes | Ratio 1.33:1 | Region 0 PAL DVD