“Mass murder! It's a mass murder!”, one of the farmers questioned by Andreas Horvath cries out in desperation. At the beginning of 2001, the foot-and-mouth disease was headline news on television and in the press. Images of burning pyres piled high with carcasses of dead animals shocked public opinion and some people were indignant, literally talking of ritual sacrifices, of a return to paganism. More than in other countries the British countryside was affected: the farming world reeled under the shock.
In May 2001, as the epidemic appeared to have been halted, a new source of infection was discovered in North Yorkshire. This time, avoiding all media coverage, the MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) backed up by the Army intervened in a perfectly orchestrated operation aimed at destroying the incriminated herd. Last September, whereas four million animals had been slaughtered, the Ministry announced that it was likely that only a quarter of the animals would have become infected; the rest had been slaughtered as a precaution.
An ordinary investigative report would have compared the accounts of farmers with official announcements, analysing the chain of causes and effects, denouncing rumours or justifying suspicions of a plot. The Silence of Green, however, proposes an elegy, a requiem expressing the state of utter confusion of a disaster-stricken industry, making a political indictment in the form of a poetic essay. While a series of witness accounts from Yorkshire farmers are heard off-screen, Andreas Horvath depicts an idyllic English countryside marked by a heavy silence, as if a huge shroud now covered it.
Filmed in super 8, with sweeping pan shots, the film constantly reveals the gap that irremediably grows between the tragedy as it is described and the beauty of the shots and the countryside, reminiscent of paintings by John Constable. When the trembling images of the slaughters appear, emotion and horror seize the spectator.
On the way, Andreas Horvath composes a veritable liturgy in memory of these animals and farmers who, without anyone realising it, were sacrificed on the altar of a planned economy.
- Bertrand Bacqué eas Horvath
In May 2001, as the epidemic appeared to have been halted, a new source of infection was discovered in North Yorkshire. This time, avoiding all media coverage, the MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) backed up by the Army intervened in a perfectly orchestrated operation aimed at destroying the incriminated herd. Last September, whereas four million animals had been slaughtered, the Ministry announced that it was likely that only a quarter of the animals would have become infected; the rest had been slaughtered as a precaution.
An ordinary investigative report would have compared the accounts of farmers with official announcements, analysing the chain of causes and effects, denouncing rumours or justifying suspicions of a plot. The Silence of Green, however, proposes an elegy, a requiem expressing the state of utter confusion of a disaster-stricken industry, making a political indictment in the form of a poetic essay. While a series of witness accounts from Yorkshire farmers are heard off-screen, Andreas Horvath depicts an idyllic English countryside marked by a heavy silence, as if a huge shroud now covered it.
Filmed in super 8, with sweeping pan shots, the film constantly reveals the gap that irremediably grows between the tragedy as it is described and the beauty of the shots and the countryside, reminiscent of paintings by John Constable. When the trembling images of the slaughters appear, emotion and horror seize the spectator.
On the way, Andreas Horvath composes a veritable liturgy in memory of these animals and farmers who, without anyone realising it, were sacrificed on the altar of a planned economy.
- Bertrand Bacqué eas Horvath
