Holika

Double-exposures and format shifting are just two of the more material ways that Holika explores the contrasts of ancient traditions and the modern age. Four names are credited with sound and it's part of a rich and sometimes solarised and often over-printed and vibrantly coloured sense of festival.

The mixture of elements is at times startling - the throngs, veiled women in a circle, staffs like clubs brought down rhythmically upon shields in an ancient style, the unblinking eye of a smartphone watching. There are moments of stillness, a straight razor drawn down a cheek gathers lather of a lurid purple, the foam rich with the dyes of delight, the palette of playful celebration. There are moments of motion, the swirl of the crowd, the movement of masses. Among the silver-painted faces and swimmers leaving coloured ripples in the river, and the old streets and new buildings, and in the the water pistols upon them is a sense of futurity and of tradition, and how each in turn informs the others, and in this film that is something worth celebrating and so too is this film.