An award-winning feature-length creative documentary exploring the extraordinary world of the plasmodial slime mould through the eyes of the fringe scientists, mycologists and artists. In recent years this curious organism has become the focus of much research in such areas as biological-inspired design, emergence theory, unconventional computing and robot engineering.
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In the late 1970's, maybe even into the very early 1980's, one of my favorite pastimes was to sit down in front of the television and watch documentaries about biological life at its frontiers, at the fuzzy borders of what was then known and unknown, a place where plant intelligence and perception, the functioning of outer space bodies, the behavioral patterns of bigfeet, whale & dolphin song, alien civilizations, microbiological systems, ESP, reincarnation, all seemed amenable to study with a gentle and patient sense of wonder, a lack of judgement, woozy synthesizer scoring and astonishing computer-driven simulations of complex processes. There was both a reverence and an excitement, an awareness of being on the cusp of knowledge, and of knowing as…
A lovely trance-inducing documentary about slime molds, the unusual half-plant, half-living-organism growing in the woods behind your house. The film explores the world of amateur mycologists, as well as artists, scientists and computer engineers that study or work with this extremely unique organism.
The film flounders a little in the beginning, as the mechanism for luring you into the mysterious, nearly science-fictional world of the slime mold is long sections of ambient drone music over images. I think some of these flights of style would have played better at the end of the film when you can ponder them, (and the amazing fast-motion footage of the creeping slimes,) in concurrence with the sometimes startling facts you've heard. There is a…
The last film of 2023 was this fascinating documentary. You know you're an EXTREME empath, when you begin to feel sorry for all the slime molds that are being experimented on, in captivity.
A very procedural documentary. The scientists and the slime/fungus shine, but the musical score is the real star of this. I wish the directors had utilized more different camera angles and improved lighting.
Slime moulds are pretty crazy little organisms. This is what Egon from Ghostbusters should have been doing in that abomination of a reboot from a couple of years ago. Studying slime moulds. He would have loved them. A haunted slime mould that grows to enormous proportions and speeds itself up to mega speed. Now that'd be a movie.
I love the eerie sound design to this documentary. The score leaves you with the impression that something horrific is going to happen. Like that adorable amateur mycologist who we wander around the forest with as he digs out these beautiful little slime mould colonies with his little flashlight is going to suddenly start convulsing and then a huge fungal spear is…
Earth is so full of tiny things, an infinite variety of life. You might step on fifty species you've never heard of on your walk to work, and most of us will spend our lives in ignorance of these obscure wonders. But for every known organism, one can safely assume there is a fan club somewhere devoted to studying it. The Creeping Garden wants to share that devotion with the world while attempting to answer the all-important question: Who are these fanatics, and why do they care? Says co-director Tim Grabham on the Blu-ray's commentary track, "What is a slime mould?...It depends on who you are and what you're looking for," an offhand musing that could have been the film's tagline. Above all, this is a documentary about looking.
A documentary about slime moulds as the nexus of some incredible interdisciplinary work, as well as a reflection on the limits of human knowledge. How strange does something have to be before it begins to break down the order we’ve projected onto the world? The content is fascinating, but directors Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp also imbue the the film with some serious style. irers of ‘70s sci-fi/horror will be pleased. The use of slime moulds as simulations for human migration and global networks is mind-blowing stuff. I was also viscerally grossed out and felt like I needed a shower afterwards. The Creeping Garden would round out a really great double bill with The Beach House or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I don't have much to say on this sprawling science doc, as I was never a particularly strong STEM student, my eyes glazing over whenever the subject got too technical.
This did make me think back on the scene in Infinite Jest where Hal eats the slime mold. No, not the second mold-eating sequence of that massive book, which causes him to merge with the universe and experience a sense of unity and oneness, but the absolutely disgusting recollection by his brother Orin near the beginning of the novel.
"He re that in the middle of the tilling I came tear-assing out the door and into the backyard wearing some sort of fuzzy red Pooh-wear, crying, holding out something he…
Fascinating documentary. I'm now super interested in slime molds.
A fascinating subject that is used more as a launch pad for digression than focused study, leaving one pining for facts not art experimentation: how do slime moulds reproduce? How do they die?
I might have missed the answers - possibly because of the occasionally distracting music - but they are fundamental questions to an understanding of the matter in hand. All else that follows is left largely rudderless, where less pratting-about with human rope patterns - which provides its own unsought answers - might have helped.
Nevertheless stunning time-lapse photography of these organisms makes up for occasional human folly.
Amazing documentary about a bunch of scientists and artists who are completely addicted to a weird plasmodial slime mould...
They make it move, they make it play music, they make humans reenact as the mould... it's mesmerizing and strange as fuck.
Fascinating stuff!
I first heard about Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp's documentary in 2017, when we were sent a screener of Arrow films' Blu-Ray. Given that The Creeping Garden was completed in 2014, that suggests it had a tough time finding distributors. While it's easy to guess why - there hasn't traditionally been much of a market for feature-length documentaries about slime mould - the finished film is worth the wait. You could fairly argue that it's ahead of its time, exploring subject matter that's since fuelled successful works by Merlin Sheldrake (in his book Entangled Life) and Stuart Staples (in his documentary Minute Bodies, which uses clips from the same F. Percy Smith short that's excerpted in The Creeping Garden).
The…
