The mystery and history of Japan’s love affair with insects; the starkly beautiful lives and routines of reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland; and the haunted, fairy-tale forests of Eastern Europe—these are just some of the surprising subjects that globe-trotting filmmaker Jessica Oreck has explored in her wondrously idiosyncratic, perception-altering documentaries. Fascinated by ethnobiology—the exchange between human beings and the natural world—Oreck draws on diverse cultural traditions, mythologies, and philosophies to reveal the sublime in the everyday world.
This interview with director Jessica Oreck was filmed in 2022.
Directed by Jessica Oreck • 2009 • United States, Japan
Working backward through history, BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO explores the mystery of the development of Japan’s love affair with insects. It opens in modern-day Tokyo—where bugs are sold live in vending machines and a single beetle recentl...
Directed by Jessica Oreck • 2013 • United States, Finland
Brothers Aarne and Lasse Aatsinki are cowboys of the Arctic. Quiet but good-natured, daredevilish but humble, rugged but gentle, and exceptionally knowledgeable when it comes to their little slice of wilderness, they live, along with thei...
Directed by Jessica Oreck • 2014 • United States, Poland
Within a dense forest there lingers a sense of sinister foreboding, where the fairy tales of childhood persist within the subconscious. For generations of Slavic peoples, this fear manifested itself in the form of the mythical witch Baba Y...
