This is my attempt to stop time for a moment and to look through a different prism at the things which have been around us for so long, forgotten by us for so long. Forest, lake, meadow, sky... twilight... moon... In 2000 I traveled to a lake between St. Petersburg and Moscow - Lake Seliger - which attracted me because of its unique nature. The greatness of the surrounding world struck me with its tranquility and balance. Man was melted into it, into trees, grass and water, those phenomena which he as a city dweller had been ignoring in the whirlpool of daily life. Using reality as a guide to lead me, I allowed my camera become an observer of this harmony and perfection, where humans are just one part of a bigger and more complex organism. I watched how night fell into day and day brought night, how spring blossomed into summer, and summer vanished into fall. I saw how winter conquered fields and forests and imprisoned the lake, freezing everything until the spring. And then spring came and the constant flow of life repeated itself. All these processes unveiled in front of my camera during my three years of visiting Lake Seliger and devoting myself to its mystery. In my film I try to express my admiration of this unforgettable place, not by making an exactly truthful portrait of the lake but, rather, by creating a special world of nature with its own temporal, spatial and rhythmic connections, which don't correspond to the accepted logic of developing phenomena. With its impressionistic sequences, the film is more related to a dream than to a linear story. In this film I wanted to develop a feeling of recurrence, repetition and the continuous rebirth of natural phenomena, over which we as humans have no control. This film is my attempt to express the world, nature and the Universe through imagery and thus to confirm the harmony that exists between man and nature, man's freedom and his or her responsibility for the world's well-being.

Masha Godovannaya