The Botanist

The Botanist investigates and visually reveals a garden of plants native to the continents of Europe and North Africa, some now endangered. Rughani worked closely with the director Yto Barrada and was given complete autonomy for the camerawork. The Botanist was shot in Umberto Pasti’s garden on the Atlantic coast south of Tangiers. Rughani made two field trips (six weeks) to research gardens and stories.

Rughani’s contribution to knowledge was to devise a novel form of camerawork to give centre-stage to plants and planting. Rugani filmed at ‘plant level’, exclusively within the frame of one metre’s distance to the ground. Rughani’s camerawork departs from the conventions of garden documentary with its linear, presenter-led narrative. Rughani’s filming does not follow Pasti’s garden tour for his friends, and it is not synchronized with their conversations. Positioned edge of frame in the mid-ground/back-ground, human presence is de-centred; plants and their relationships were filmed in the foreground with varying depths of field. The camera work interleaves static, tripod-mounted close-ups with hand-held tracking shots, extending Rughani’s thinking on the theory and practice of the long take.

Rughani led cross-cultural documentary seminars with Moroccan film-makers and artists in Tangiers-brokered by the Documentary Film-Makers’ Group with EU support.

The final cut of The Botanist premiered at Modern Art Oxford (2009).

• https://www.lotusfilms.co.uk/the-botanis...