Burning Ground
HD, 17 min, 2022
Exhibition view at Czech Center, New York

Wildfire is usually framed as catastrophe: scorched forests, blackened soil, landscapes reduced to ash. Adam Vackar in his film Burning Ground looks at the same terrain from another angle. In the film, Vackar explores fire as one of the oldest ecological forces shaping landscapes: destructive in the immediate moment, but fundamental to cycles of regeneration.

The film, guided by a conversation with botanist Dr. Michal Hejcman, moves through burned fields and charred vegetation, observing what begins to emerge after the flames have passed. Seeds activated by heat, soil opened for new growth, and species adapted to disturbance reveal fire not simply as a disaster but as a complex biological process embedded in the dynamics of living systems. The film avoids the familiar imagery of disaster reporting and instead lingers in the quiet aftermath: the textures of burned ground, the slow return of life, the subtle shifts that follow ecological disturbance. What appears at first glance as devastation gradually unfolds as a field of transformation, where destruction and renewal are inseparable.

The original soundtrack by composer Natálie Pleváková deepens the atmosphere of the film, moving between tension and calm. Both image and sound invite viewers to reconsider burned landscapes, usually observed as the end of life. The film is pointing to the process of it’s natural renewal, a stage of an ongoing processes of regenerating ecosystems.