Treeline

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Treeline

Video, 17’, 52” 2021

Co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Forestry England.

Supported by John Hansard Gallery, University of Glasgow and Arts Council England

“Like a forest, Treeline spreads horizontally. The film has not one, but many viewpoints: those of all the different cameras and people holding them around the planet.”

Treeline is a collectively made film sourced from hundreds of clips of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. From a patchwork of disparate individual contributions (sent in by scientists, ecologists, artists and members of the public alike), Maclennan traces a sinuous green line that stretches from the wild woods of North America to the rainforests of the Amazon to the copses of middle England and the scrublands of Africa, as well as myriad places in-between.

Resembling a continuous horizontal travelling shot, Maclennan’s infinite panorama of trees is a vivid reminder of the swathes of green that continue to encircle and nourish the planet, and a powerful emblem of the shared resources and shared futures that bind people together. A paean to the beauty and majesty of trees, Treeline also echoes something of their form – putting out exploratory feelers, and drawing material from multiple places to create an enveloping, overarching structure that is so much more than the sum of its parts.


Beyond the Trees
Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards

https://www.fvu.co.uk/read/writing/beyond-the-trees
In this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s Treeline, Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards consider the wider botanical, cultural and geopolitical resonances that are opened up by the work.


Reflections on Ruth Maclennan’s ‘Treeline’

Ben Rawlence
Author and activist Ben Rawlence finds multiple points of kinship and connection with his own journeys around the arboreal zones of the Arctic in this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s film Treeline.

https://www.fvu.co.uk/read/reflections-on-ruth-maclennans-treeline


BBC Front Row
radio broadcast from July 2021

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xs0f
George Monbiot and artist Ruth Maclennan on their eco arts projects.

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