Dominique Lasseur

Released on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection's "Martha Graham: Dance on Film" collection.

An anti-nuclear parable, the film tells the story of villagers who each year traditionally hold "sap weddings", thus paying homage to the forest. But a nuclear power plant must be built there. The film was presented in competition at the Thonon-les-Bains festival in 1978.

This film is a rich and haunting reinvention of medieval life that never loses its contemporary perspective. When the plague afflicts a village, this world seems to go up in an apocalypse of hatred and disease that presages our own century.

Hate has many faces: racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sectarianism, domestic violence. But do we really understand its roots, and are there practical ways to cope with it? What is hate doing to us? And what does hate do for us?