Kyath Battie: Night Garden

Kyath Battie’s Night Garden presents a series of telephone conversations with her mother, who faces the “late life crisis” of a fourth cancer diagnosis. A saturated video montage of nearly still lives – home décor objects and furnishings, stacks of paperbacks,  trays and baskets of perfume, pill bottles, hairclips and cosmetics – are intercut with lush, heady footage of dramatically lit garden blossoms, captured at night. Over the quiet, mechanical hum of late summer cicadas, we hear Dianna Battie’s voice and words, plaintive, reflective, and matter of fact as she grapples with her prognosis and the emotions it has stirred or stilled in her. Tender and loving but unsentimental, Night Garden reflects on the comforts of home, the strange wonder and simultaneous banality of being, and the unstoppable passage of time.

Kyath Battie is a filmmaker with specific interests in mysteries, landscapes and sound design. Her work ranges from personal and observational documentaries to atmospheric spatial explorations of space. Her work also involves large-scale viewership, often creating a fine line between a ‘cinematic’ and still photographic experience.

Her films have been screened internationally including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, L'Alternativa Independent Film Festival of Barcelona, and Images Festival, Toronto. Kyath teaches film production at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.