jenny chamarette
Title: Big Fern Energy
Duration: 2 min 1 sec
Year: 2021
I have heard it said that human embryonic development begins from the rectum outwards. Humans begin life as an arsehole. But ferns begin as tiny tender green hearts. Hermaphroditic green.
When fern spores ‘set’ in humid soil, protected from direct sunlight beneath their parent plants, they transform into a kind of primordial green slime, from which, eventually, fern leaves start to appear. Fern gametophytes begin life as a cluster of heart-shaped green cells, both male and female (and neither, and both).
The first part of Bo Zheng’s Pteridophilia ends in the sound of orgasm: full, sensory, breath-squeezing. But the final shot is of a fiddlehead; the quivering, as-yet-unfurled extension of a young frond that will result in the fully-mature, sexually equipped leaf. In every part of the film, the invitation is to gaze erotically on the the naked skin of the young men and the ferns of the forest floor, the scatter of light on skin and shadow through leaves.
Fern sexuality is sensual, sensory, girded by breath and birdsong, earth and frond.
Bio
Jenny Chamarette is a writer, curator, and academic.