TESA MAN

Ugis Olte’s film TESA MAN, is an awe-inspiring, music-driven exploration of an artist’s connection to the natural world and the creative process. Set in the frozen Baltic landscapes of Latvia, the “narrative” begins with an artist breaking through the ice of a lake, gathering mud and dirt to create natural paints. As he works in isolation, his creations blend with the elements—rain, earth, and water—while abandoned statues scattered across the forest hint at forgotten stories. The imagery evolves to show four women performing rituals in the lake and milk pouring into the earth.

The story intensifies with the band TESA’s performance. Their raw and powerful music creates a pulsing backdrop to scenes of fire, flowing water, and snow-covered forests. As the music plays, a crowd gathers around the band, some documenting the moment with light sticks and cell phones while others maintain the communal fire. The interplay of music and nature becomes increasingly visceral as elements like steam, ash, and snow blend with human activity in a near-ritualistic fashion.

As the performance continues, a solitary man leaves his small home, drawn toward the collective scene. Finding a fallen statue’s head, he stumbles into the gathering, bewildered and unsure of the purpose behind it all. The shared moment by the fire, juxtaposed with the sudden outage of a generator, leaves the narrative open-ended, emphasizing the fragile interplay between creation, nature, community, and the life that is sprung from all of it.

“…their raw and powerful music creates a pulsing backdrop to scenes of fire, flowing water, and snow-covered forests.”

Right off the bat, TESA MAN is a musical art film. There’s no dialogue—just a series of narratives told through the camera with a hard rock soundtrack provided by the band TESA. Art films aren’t exactly my go-to genre, as sometimes ideas and themes are so lofty that they fly way over my normal head.

TESA MAN remains grounded as it explores the line between nature and art. There is a beauty that nature manages to create on her own. As human artists, TESA MAN accentuates nature’s natural art by creating art with nature as its medium and, through rock music, sometimes brings out the violent undertones of nature.

There is some imagery that I can get out of my mind. The band performs in a carved-out section on the side of a small hill. The cold allows us to see every breath the band makes, and we feel the intensity of the icy cold and the band’s rugged rock performance. Symbolism is found in a quartet of women walking toward the icy pond wearing nothing but a see-through plastic pancho and cutting to a closeup of a cow’s udder, followed by milk flowing down a muddy embankment. Then there are the final moments of a life-created ending in a provocative interpreted dance.

The sound design is perfect as a film, from nature’s subtle rhythms and silence to the crisp, clean recordings of TESA’s music. The cinematography is pure artistry, utilizing tilt-shift and macro photography. It’s an explosion of everything Latvia offers in sight and sound. Tesa Man is an incredibly vibrant art film and an excellent introduction for any viewer.