Night

We're confronted with it every time the earth completes a turn around its axis: night. This ode to the night is a blend of lyrical images, sustained by the symphonic sounds of Cezary Skubiszewski and various people who describe how they experience different aspects of the night. Because light is the standard in our world, we experience the dark and dusky hours as deviating, mysterious and exciting. Those are the free and loose hours: of going out, of clouding one's mind, of voraciously eating and drinking, of dancing and singing in abandon, of making love and sleeping. The hours of the carnival and the theatre, the bar and the restaurant, the concert hall and the bowling alley, the bedroom and the brothel. But beyond the city that never sleeps, the peace and quiet of nature is overwhelming. Deserted landscapes bathed in moonlight prompt man to philosophize about his relationship with the moon, the fear of darkness, and the contrast between day and night. As we read in Genesis, in the beginning, God created light - and with it, darkness. With man's invention of artificial light, Night shows how he has taken control of that darkness. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)