Village Without Maps
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Village Without Maps.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
Timber houses stand in mountain fog, and no road is drawn away from them into the trees. Rain ticks on the thatch in a fine, steady fall. The fog takes the rain and keeps the far trees only as darker fog. A man spreads a torn sheet across a steel tray already full of rain and tries to sketch the lane, the fences, the wells. The pencil line swells at once and will not hold as a map. Ink feathers into the rainwater and becomes a cloud of grey that means nothing. He looks up from the tray. The house opposite stands closer now than at the moment he unfolded the sheet. Its eaves nearly touch the fence.
Four adults and a scarecrow stand at that fence, all of them faced into the fog, none of them turned toward him. Their coats are dark with the fine rain. The scarecrow's straw arms do not point a way out. He draws the fence line again. Rain lifts the stroke off the wet sheet before he can finish the post. He looks up a second time. A window that sat across the lane is now an arm's length beyond the tray. The timber walls have shouldered together in the mist. A drop from the eaves hits the tray's rim and the tray overflows one corner. The torn sheet turns in the water until the failed marks face down, a second loss that follows the swelling lines and leaves the tray holding only weather.
He leaves the sheet floating in the tray. The ink becomes only weather. The pencil leaves a last grey curl in the water and then the curl is gone. Rain continues on the thatch. The houses stand almost touching, and the four people and the scarecrow keep their faces to the fog that contains no road. The fence he tried to draw is close enough now that a post nearly meets the tray. He does not pick the sheet up to try a third time. The wells, if they are still wells, are inside the fog with no line to lead to them.
The floating sheet stays face down. The scarecrow drips and does not turn. The four adults do not offer a direction with a hand. Timber almost touches timber. The tray keeps the rain, and the fog keeps every exit the pencil could not hold.
The man stands with the pencil useless in a wet hand. He does not walk into the fog to find the road the sheet could not keep. Rain ticks the thatch at the same fine rate. The overflow from the tray runs a short dark line in the dirt and stops, not a lane, not a map. The house an arm's length off does not retreat. Eaves and fence nearly touch and stay in that nearness. The four adults blink rain and keep their faces turned away from him, toward the trees that are only darker fog. The scarecrow's straw darkens and does not point. The torn sheet floats face down, its failed strokes washed into the same grey as the weather. No road draws itself out of the village while he waits.