A Cinematic Meditation on Luchtdruk
Filmmaker Juan Benavides has created a short film from 6-½ minutes he shot for At the Garden’s Pace, the 2024 documentary film about the construction of a pavilion for a botanical garden in Hilversum, Netherlands. The short film shows architect Enzo Valerio and others blowing sand from cracks in the newly formed concrete walls with luchtdruk—compressed air.
Filmed over four seasons and fifteen site visits, Juan Benavides’s At the Garden’s Pace patiently observes the construction of a garden pavilion at the Pinetum Blijdenstein in Hilversum, designed and built by architect Enzo Valerio. Consisting of concrete floors, walls, and roof, the open pavilion's character is gained by the striated cracks within the walls—cracks that are carefully constructed and revealed by the architect and his team over much of the 68-minute film film.
Reviewing the documentary here in 2025, Nishi Shah found the scenes of sand blown from the cracks to be a highlight of the film: “As the sand is blown from these cracks with air pressure, clouds of dust rise, swirling back toward the very earth from which they came, giving the walls a depth through shadows. This weighty shot explores the relationship between the built and the natural, an interplay that is not just visual and physical but emotional, and even spiritual.”
As such, it was a pleasant surprise to find Benavides releasing this week a short film, Luchtdruk, consisting simply of black-and-white footage of Valerio and others using compressed air to blow sand from the cracks in the concrete walls. It's a captivating, almost meditative short that is heightened by the black-and-white presentation and Alon Peretz's bubbling soundtrack.