The opening to Frederico Urdaneta’s Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment announces the ambiguous atmosphere of the rest of the film. Set to what seems like some kind of medieval-type music, rain clouds pass a blue sky, but the beginning of thunder in the background is audible. If it weren’t for a large telescope towering in the middle of the scenery, the idyllic nature of the location would feel untouched, with its inhabitants living as one with their surroundings. It is this dichotomy that pervades the documentary, like a distant foreign body within something that almost feels innocent in its presentation.

For the sake of their own wellbeing, the people we meet in the film have decided to live in a society without any wireless signals: Green Bank, West Virginia. Their lifestyle exudes a self-sufficient approach as they go about their day sharing their thoughts on how they can feel the wiring beneath the floor and detect dirty electricity. They present their impressions and findings in a plain, matter-of-fact way, and the film does nothing to prove or disprove them. It just presents the surroundings and this particular way of life, taking it at face value.

One of the most appealing aspects about Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment is that it takes its protagonists seriously, without judging them. The themes touched upon in the documentary have the potential for controversial discussions, but through Urdaneta’s approach, every viewer can take away a subjectively objective view. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because neither the people in the film, nor the filmmaker himself, try to convince us of anything. The film just shows us a portrayal of their lives, and that’s good enough. Obviously, the concept of personal truths has many downsides, but that’s not what Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment is about.

“They did not want any wireless tech to be used, so I had to use hard-wired mics”

That being said, the director admits that the given circumstances did provide particular challenges. “I filmed everything on my own”, Urdaneta reveals, before adding that he believed “this was the best way to guarantee a personal and intimate connection with the people in the film”. There is one scene in the middle of the film where the framing seems accidental, yet brilliant and this is only possible if one’s interview subjects truly trust the filmmaker. “Recording their interviews was tricky,” the filmmaker admits, “as they did not want any wireless tech to be used, so I had to use hard-wired mics for sit down sessions, and the rest of the audio was recorded solely on boom mics.“

Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment is one of the more unusual selections on Short of the Week, even though it might not seem like it at first sight. The film’s subtitle gives away what differentiates this film from many of the other shorts featured on our platform: it is a fragment of a feature documentary, also titled Green Bank Pastoral, which premiered as part of the 2020 IDFA competition. This initially created a possible predicament, since one of the most frequent flaws in short filmmaking occurs when directors don’t adhere to what’s special about the medium and try to cram an entire feature idea into an overlong short film, failing to meet the demands of either form. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, as a number of successful proof-of-concept shorts can prove, but these examples work as shorts in their own right, while still providing an idea for the larger picture.

The same argument can be made about Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment, although it is different considering that director Frederico Urdaneta went the other way in this case, which we don’t see often. The feature film can be watched in its entirety on Tubi in the US, but to create more awareness and give people all over the world the chance to see parts of Green Bank Pastoral for free, Urdaneta decided to cut up his 53-minute film and release a version of the doc as a stand-alone short. For us, the main deciding factor was whether this fragment can be judged on its own merit, which evidently is the case. 

In fact, it could be argued that the nature of this concept is one of the major selling points of the 10-minute doc. Through its elliptical, fragmented storytelling, Green Bank Pastoral – A Fragment creates a scenic tone poem in the non-fiction realm, which is hard to achieve, yet even more enticing if it succeeds. By only showing glimpses of this world and its inhabitants, Urdaneta manages to capture a genre picture beyond its vast-reaching inklings at the edges of what we get to see. The film becomes an allusive experience with no tangible narrative per se, but that’s a crucial aspect of its innovative approach. 

It will be interesting to see if filmmakers follow the Colombian director’s example and we’ll see others who choose to take parts of a longer film and turn them into a short. Although this might be unlikely, since the financial incentives work differently in comparison to short to feature route, it would certainly make for an interesting new trend in the short film medium.