Will Hindle, "Watersmith," 1969 https://bostonhassle.com/review-watersmith-1969-dir-will-hindle/ Boston Hassle 5/16/2016
*Watersmith* (1969) is Hindle’s longest film at 32 minutes. It was made during the height of his productivity and critical praise, on the heels of his surrealistic fantasy film, *Chinese Firedrill* (1968), of which film theorist Gene Youngblood has said contains “possibly one of the great scenes in the history of film.” Fantastically surreal it is–*Watersmith *unearths a hidden “world within a world” of ethereal particles, lines, and shapes moving across the screen in ways unaccustomed to our limited eyes. More concretely, the film is a document of an Olympic swim team practice. It begins inauspiciously with a shot of two swimmers changing in a murky locker room before heading out to the pool, and the practice begins… Beyond this early point in the film, divisions of time marked by events come rarely. The swimmers repetitively swim lengths of the pool to hypnotic effect. Their bodies are captured by Hindle’s camera from many uncommon angles—diagonally from a very close distance; tracked underwater from in front; peered at the tops of their heads while hovering over the pool. He establishes their presence as physical bodies by exhausting their range of motion in the pool, and then transfigures their form: Gradually, what were once biological limbs are replaced by energy and light. The pool’s water is no longer just the natural matter that gave the team their resistance to swim through; it’s a medium on which Hindle can playfully experiment with color tinting, multiple exposures, travelling mattes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_(filmmaking)>, and dreamlike lap dissolves. <https://bostonhassle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Hindle_Watersmith2-1.jpg> On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 10:32 AM jjmartinod <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello frameworkers, > Working on something new and am looking for references of > documentary/experimental short films on sports. > Would any have links/references to anything close to the topic? > Deeply appreciated. > salud, > j-j > > > > > > > - > > Sent with ProtonMail <https://protonmail.com/> Secure Email. > > -- > Frameworks mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.film-gallery.org/mailman/listinfo/frameworks_film-gallery.org >
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