Water and Power

Los Angeles takes its water from far away, and as the water of the Owens Valley was drawn to the city the valley itself dried out. Pat O’Neill’s film does not explain that relation, it turns it into image. Time lapse, superimposed frames, optical printing and motion controlled tracking shots are all used together; the shadows crossing the desert and the power lines of the city sit inside the same frame. The director worked on it across roughly ten years. The production took the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance in 1990 and was added to the National Film Registry in 2008. The fifty seven minute experimental film was completed in 1989.