CAMBIUM, the cellular stratum of trees, it’s a cambial membrane that runs along the trunk and roots, producing growth. In the Navarrese Pyrenees a community has decided to cut down a pine forest in order to recover ancient fields for cultivation and animal grazing. Structured in two parts, the film traces the change of a territory traversed by practices of violence and care for the land.
After the abandonment of the villages during the 1960s in the Arce Valley, the Government of Franco planted pines in the fields that were used for grazing as part of a state programme of reforestation and forestry. More than 50 years later, in Lakabe, a village repopulated in the 1980s, they have decided to cut down the pines and recover their meadows for livestock. Through different data capture and image technologies, CAMBIUM explores, together with the inhabitants of the area, a territory in transformation.
