Aquarela

The film is about water. There is no narrator, no character, no explanation. The camera begins on Lake Baikal, where the ice has thawed early and vehicles are going through it while people try to pull them out. Then the calving of glaciers in Greenland, a storm on open sea, a city struck by a hurricane, and a vast waterfall in Venezuela. Viktor Kossakovsky directs. Its technical side is its real matter. It was shot at ninety six frames per second; the cinema standard is twenty four. That shows the movement of water in a detail the eye normally cannot see. Very few halls could project at that rate, and in most places it was shown at a lower frame rate. The filming was done in extremely hard conditions; the crew recorded glaciers breaking from close range and the dangerous scenes are real. The idea is that water is not a background but a force; there are images of people, always small and without effect. The music is metal and caused argument; some critics found it at odds with the images. Who it is for: viewers who like nature documentary, experimental image work and the large screen. Who it is not for: there is no narrative, no information is given, and the real effect is lost on a small screen.