Bodies of Water take on many identities. A well, a pond, a river, a stream, a sea, a fountain, a bay, a lake, an ocean. They hold an innate right to exist and merit safeguarding, being universal and vital sources of our water supply. And yet, these bodies refer to the very life within the blue depths pulsating away. Through the immersed lens of a camera eye, we bear witness to the haunting beauty of life forms both real and imagined, their forms twisting and undulating in the gentle embrace of the currents. Yet, amid the beauty and wonder of these submerged worlds, there lurks a haunting question: are these embodiments merely specters of the imagination, or do they serve as silent cries for help from a realm beyond our understanding? As we gaze upon their shimmering forms, we are left to ponder the nature of our own existence and the interconnectedness of all life beneath the waves.
Walking up to the Berkeley Pit viewing stand in Butte, Montana is like experiencing a strange, sterile birth. You enter a long, white tunnel lit with fluorescent tubes. A woman's voice laid over innocuous country music echoes against the smooth walls. The recorded voice describes the history of this
Cristobal returns with his family after an unsuccessful migration attempt. While fishing with his father in an industrialised area, his dreams and his body connect with the sea that gets sick day after day.
Just below the surface of one of the most contaminated urban waterways in the United States, microorganisms thrive amidst the toxic waste.
Light pierces memories, as it cracks ice on the surface of water. Through these breaches flows a continuous stream where intimate thoughts meet an oceanic ancestor: the Dickinsonia.
At night on a fishing trawler. An injured sailor, an intolerable order, and the death of the captain. Day breaks, and with it, the crew's doubts multiply.
South Korea. Jun, a lonely child, observes every morning on the way to school, an octopus in the aquarium of a restaurant. When Jun understands the fate of the animal, he decides to flee with him to bring him back to the sea. Then begins a long journey…
As the Little Conemaugh River winds through the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, it forms the backbone of a region with a legacy of industrial might. And like a scribe, the river carries the weight of that history - mile after mile devoid of life, poisoned by toxic pollution from countless aband
Symphony in Aquamarine is a sensory and haptic exploration of our relationship to water, the sea and the ocean. Filmed on four continents, Dan Popa is a spectral observer of the lives of sea workers, modern fishermen, but also everyday people rubbing shoulders at the beaches, or scanning the horizon
Notions of belonging and the ethics of travel are questioned through female rite and ritual, pointing at the pervasive and contradictory presence of history and myth in present-day Sicily.
Impression of the underwater world in the red sea. The film is a bombardment of images and features the music of Abdel Basset Hamouda, an Egyptian musician. The structure of the film is based on the so called «flicker films», in which the unconscious experience of the images is more impo
Researchers are trying to inject DNA from photosensitive algae to heal our retinas. From ocean blue to the computer blue screen, the vision is hybridized.
I made the trip on a cargo to the North-Coast of St-Laurent river and I stopped on Anticosti island. It has 200 inhabitants and 150000 deers. The island is famous for its shipwrecks. Who are the ones who come to live here today? What are they fleeing? What are they looking for? And I, what was I sea
A detail of an image is often sufficient to evoke an archetypical vision: St. Florian´s bucket, for example, which the saint emptied over a burning house. The camera pans from this detail of an Alpine-style wall painting to a firehouse – with subtle dripping in the background – and
In an idyllic Philippine fishing village where catches are shared and breathtaking sunsets mark the days, the filmmaker befriends a young boy and captures memories of home during the last days of summer before he must leave for school in the city.
A cheerful ritual in praise of Mami Wata, a mermaid-like water spirit of life, sex and healing. A joyful show of Friedl vom Gröller's particular sense of humour as well as another short song of praise for the unique beauty to be found only in 16mm film. ( IFF Rotterdam, Catalogue 2020 )
The sound of an alphorn echoes in the mountains while glaciers are dripping. Far away, on an oceanographic boat, geologists probe the invisible seabed. Geological bodies of salt and ice emerge from the digital depths of a software. They melt and disintegrate in the hands of scientists.
Fatouh, the guardian of the Mangroves, has not been seen for some time. Some say he left after disputes with local tribes while others claim that it was due to increasing destruction and pollution of these ecosystems in the Arabian Gulf.
A boy emerges from a lake. In front of him, there is an island formed by a volcano. This island is a world where time doesn't exist, a landscape sculpted by his mind. On this island, he can live and live again what has already been experienced.
The 16mm multiple exposure film Vulnerable Waters (2022) extends my journey to explore the liquid landscapes which surround me. This time I seek to get in touch with the vulnerable habitat of marine animals and with the ducks and waters close to my home town in Austria. Salt- and sweetwater are merg
A Mirror of the Cosmos is a sci-fi feature documentary which explores how the Mar Menor lagoon, located in southeastern Spain and considered a beachside paradise, is being pushed by the climate crisis to the brink of extinction and beyond. Opening with a conversation between the moon and the sea abo
Documentary essay, filmed during an Atlantic crossing aboard a cargo ship. A film about immensity and faith, about the uninterrupted movements of the waves and their power. And finally, perhaps most importantly, about the men aboard, witnesses and actors in this life between two shores, isolated in
Four kids from the refugee camp in Bethlehem decide to visit the sea for the first time in their lives.
A frog enters an assassin's corpse. It conducts a sensory investigation and takes us through sometimes dark, sometimes vulnerable territories.
Following the shooting of a documentary on the death of her daughter, a mother reflects on her own life and especially on the passing of time.
A group of Indigenous Achuar children that moves self-determined through the endless green. Along the course of the Pastaza River, on the border between Ecuador and Peru, they catch fish, hunt and cook, play with lianas and watch videos on their smartphones. Director Inês T. Alves respectfully
This film follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier's wanderings through each of their worlds as they wonder through and contemplate the afterlife, rebirth, and the place in-between. Spoken mostly in chinuk wawa, their stories are departures from the Chinookan origin of death myth, with its distan
Scenes from above, below and around the Sargasso Sea, a body of water unbounded by land where ecology and mythology have coexisted since before Juan de Bermúdez's 1505 expedition. Where spirits whisper through the Island's flora and fauna, only to be interrupted by the alternating currents of
Filmed at Masonboro Island, an undeveloped barrier island in southeastern North Carolina, "Tides" contemplates the liminal space between the modern technological world and that more ecological dimension we label as "nature" or "the environment."
Frequency communicates through non-verbal language the vastness of the infinite universe. It takes us on a psychological journey- questioning whether our universe is just one or many co-existing parallels?
From one byte to another the machine must muster, for data is water. A drop of water is like a pixel that shapes the canvas that is Florida. Like water, data is vital to the sustained growth of living beings. The presence of mundane Florida waters as noticed by Florida-born Goswami in 2023 are surre
Hazmat-suited wanderers risk an eco-voyage into the past and future, an apocalyptic sojourn through landscapes threatened by climate change and toxic exposure. Scored by haunting voiceover and sound collage, "Project Hazmatic: Demolition Suite" captures the unexpected beauty and ravaged spectacle of
Water falls down to the basin of the fountain in an undisturbed rhythm. The babbling water soothes the eye, calms our thoughts. The name of the baroque fountain in the Portuguese town of Porto is "Chafariz das Virtudes", the "Fountain of Virtues". Porto is the place where director Manoel de Oliveira
When a young girl is found off the Venezuelan coast, a medical examiner will try to determine the cause of death before the body is repatriated.
In "subotopic", the viewer's gaze dives below the water's surface downwards into ever deeper layers of water. In morphed single-frame switching, bizarre pictorial plants and insect creatures pass by the viewer. One dives into lightless spaces until one penetrates a surface of light again. Diving dee
Yakuaya is a nonverbal documentary that portrays the course of water and of life itself. The film follows the journey of a drop of water from its origin in a glacier to its arrival at sea. The storyline emerges through symbolic images that connote the poetic ontology of water in order to express the
Sea Tomorrow invites you to the journey around the area that once used to be sea. Nearly twice as large as Switzerland, the Aral Sea was still among the four largest ones on the planet in 1960. Unfortunately, overreliance on its tributaries Amu Darya and Sry Daria for agriculture has dried it up. Ac
Every night across the globe, billions of zooplankton migrate from the depths of the ocean to its surface. This diverse community includes pelagic creatures that spend their entire lives in the open ocean, as well as the planktonic larval stages of various taxonomic groups. This short film, "Fall in
Deserted landscapes, ancient ruins and abandoned shipwrecks at sea. Elefsina's archeological sites don't come close to being as hauntingly beautiful as these dead ships. They stand majestically like memorial sculptures and bring a magnetism to the eye. In fact, these are the neglected refugees of El
The film aims to offer a trip over water, a succession of changing landscapes. It is a constructed landscape that depicts the natural disaster and its consequence on humans. Filmed in Tokyo, the video is a collaboration with the Japanese band "Tenniscoats". Sea of Instability bypasses the metaphoric
A young fossil hunter makes a groundbreaking discovery, challenging the worldview of 19th century England. More on the film at https://www.seadragonfilm.com/
Described by its director, Juanita Onzaga, as a work of 'ancestral futurism', this dizzying visual journey takes on the perspective of Sybille, the last woman on Earth, a planet where water no longer exists. She seeks to communicate with the spirit of water, a carrier and transmitter of more memory
Have you ever had a dream about water? Could you tell its story? You haven't? Would you want to try an experiment? I'll give you some soundtracks. Proof of concept version of a project in development
A group of Senegalese fishermen spend 7 days out to sea on a large wooden pirogue. On this nautical confined space is revealed their hard routine, but also the deep bond that they have developed between them.
"Als sie ertrunken war und hinunter schwamm von den Bächen in die größeren Flüsse" ["Once she had drowned and started her slow descent / Down the streams to where the great rivers broaden."] In her touching, untrained voice, the filmmaker sings this Brecht/Weill song from the 19
Through a confessional letter to a loved one, the lasting impacts of a mental illness on female fertility unfolds. As the fluidity of water and the body intertwine, the artist takes us on a journey towards healing as she enters into symbiosis with nature. Filmed in a Belgian nature reserve that over
A case study of the Canadian cod fisheries collapse of 1992. Investigates what the future of natural resource management holds, and what we can learn from our past mistakes.
A dark voyage into one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the United States. In New York City, a Superfund cleanup is now underway, unearthing the toxic sediment of 'black mayonnaise' at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal.
"Woza" ("Come" in Zulu) tells the story of an African surfer who has been taken as a lover by the African water spirit Mami Wata. It features 22 year-old Transkei surfer, Avuyile Ndamase.
Faced with the injustices of this world, Margot has lost all hope in the future. Giving up on politics, she decides to entrust her fate to the Dardu, a legendary carp that supposedly predicts the future. But the lake's rules have changed: fishing is now forbidden. Face aux injustices du monde, Margo
Gudrun Krebitz's Echodrome brings together countless magical film layers and weaves them into an underwater song of overlapping thoughts and questions. In the beginning, everything seems to be enveloped in night and swathed in a deep, dark blue always in motion, just like the water flowing through t
UMBILIC is an essay film that expands on the current discourse of Hydrofeminism through a mapping of research into water, following the line of a Black Feminist Geographical framework. An excavation into Scotland's Black history, this work began in 2020, which incidentally was the 'Year of Scottish
An exiled woman wrestling with a repressed past finds comfort by the sea. To allay her nostalgia, she writes a letter – a bottle at sea.
The oceans are going through a critical moment for their future. The problems arising from overfishing, the health of marine habitats, or pollution require immediate attention. Only science can provide answers to these threats and, for this reason, the UN has declared the Decade of Ocean Science for