Water Light

The wanderings (and Lawrence Jordan's "Odyssey" triptych) begin in the late 1950s when the filmmaker joined the U.S. Merchant Marines and sailed through stormy and serene weather to the Orient. WATER LIGHT is an impression of that far wandering.

Director 'Nicholas Ray' is eager to complete a final film before his imminent death from cancer. Wim Wenders is working on his own film Hammett (1983) in Hollywood, but flies to New York to help Ray realize his final wish. Ray's original intent is to make a fiction film about a dying painter who sails to China to find a cure for his disease. He and Wenders discuss this idea, but it is obviously unrealistic given Ray's state of health.

Made in collaboration with the Cree community of Waswanipi, this is an extraordinary documentary that is equal parts observational and poetic. Shot over a year, co-directors Nicolas Lachapelle and Ariel St-Louis Lamoureux follow a group of children through their daily life. A generous and human meditation on identity and place that's unfettered by an issue-driven hook or an imposed narrative, this is the rare sort of film that transcends categorization, becoming a beautiful work of art to behold.

An audiovisual poem which touches on recent civil disobedience movements that employed tactics and gestures inspired by water and light – movements which have been subject to unrelenting suppression, leaving us with the question: who will still have the courage to be water and light?

In 1982, soon after the first Gay Games, 'West Hollywood Swim Club,' as it was known then, registered as the first openly gay masters swim and water polo club. This feature documentary film follows their battle for acceptance: from their humble beginnings, to how these men and women have become a renowned force fighting injustice in the world of competitive sports.

Schneemann's classic 1966 aerial "Kinetic Theatre" work was first staged at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, with eight performers moving to a score of randomized encounter on layers of rigged ropes and pulleys. One of two video documents of this early and influential performance, this version is enacted outdoors in trees and across the surface of a lake, in sequences directed by Schneemann.

Filmed on both sides of the US-Canadian border before the transition to our collective “new normal,” every light returns – sinister bodies of water takes its inspiration from the possibilities inherent in gritty monochromatic filmstock; the landscapes of Essex Country and rural Michigan; and the hypnotic score performed by local musician JAG. I pushed the digital format as far away from a “clean” image as I could, trying to reflect the ambient feeling in the audio composition.

Eight performers, suspended from ropes, move to a score of randomized encounter. Schneemann writes that this "kinetic theatre" work was "conceived as an aerial event with ropes rigged across the canal at San Marco... finally realized at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, then later rigged in a grove of trees. The illuminated aqueous planes of Venice motivated the performers on layers of ropes which enclosed and surrounded the audience seated below." One of two video documents of this early and influential performance, this version features original film footage by Elaine Summers.

Film by Jon Behrens

"Sky Blue Water Light Sign is best seen in total innocence. My guess is that if one knows what he or she is looking at before seeing this little film, half of its excitement and a good deal of its meaning disappears. Seen in total innocence, though (and maybe I’m exaggerating the importance of this), SKY BLUE WATER is a wonder. With Gottheim’s Blues and Frampton’s Lemon (for Robert Hunt), it is one of the happiest, most uplifting short films I’ve ever seen.” – Scott MacDonald, Idiolects" -- Scott MacDonald, Idiolects. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Images from an aerial tram leaving Manhattan are followed by images of a nearly static bird, of bugs fighting, and of light bending as it passes through glass. Near the film's end the tram lands in Manhattan, as if it had reversed direction; as in all of Murray's films, the images and the editing can pull several ways at once. There are no absolutes, and even the light by which we see is altered by the material it passes through. – Fred Camper

A journey through the masterpieces and obsessions of the Genius of the Impressionism, down the River Seine, from Le Havre to Paris and then up the river towards Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny – ending in Paris. A tour of the Museums displaying Monet's masterpieces: the Orangerie Museum, the Marmottan Museum, the Orsay Museum, ending in Monet's house and gardens at Giverny.