The waterworks
in the Beaches area of Toronto is the source of an eidetic-like
image from early childhood. It was always an enigma to me, and
after returning years later to shoot this film, I was still not
satisfied it was merely a filtration plant. Its architecture functioned
more significantly as some kind of temporal metaphor. Wallace
Stevens’ ironic and equally enigmatic poem, “A
Clear Day And No Memories,” was sought out to address
this phenomenon, and to appear as interruptive graphic for the
same reason the editing is interruptive—that is, to both
work with the alluring nature of the image, yet force an intellectual
distancing.
Just as the
supposedly clear air is used as the protagonist in Stevens’
poem, the precisionist clarity of imagery is foregrounded in the
film. The structure reinforces human memory processing, and later,
when the first half of the film is repeated (recalled), the Stevens’
text, generated by computer memory, runs across the screen in
a style contradicting the mood of the picture and sound, which
are now forced into the background. (RH)
“The first
of three “cine poems” (also including Landfall
and Beach Events) that incorporates both oral and written
text into the image in a manner that does not simply explain the
image but extends the dimension of the film in a further direction.
Waterworx focuses on a large water processing plant located
on a seemingly isolated bluff that overlooks Lake Ontario, As
no establishing shot is provided, the feeling of the architectural
space remains enigmatic as the camera traverses the façade.
Hancox’s father had once told him that tubercular children
were once brought to lay at the site and so in the background
there are sounds of children playing accompanying the initial
exploration of the building. At the midpoint the exploration is
completed and the camera repeats its tracking over the imagery.
The haunting images of the building are initially re-absorbed
relative to the textual references.” (Cathy Jonasson, “Recent
Canadian Experimental Films,” Catalogue published by Canada
House, 1990)
“What
I find most impressive about Waterworx is Hancox’s
ability to fuse Stevens’ poem and his own imagery and sound,
not only without doing damage to the poem, but so that the film
provides an effective reading of it... The clear, empty vistas
of the film (empty action, of people) reflect those of the poem,
and yet both are haunted by the presence of the poetic mind in
its process of forming what we are experiencing.” Scott
MacDonald, Afterimage, March 1986
“Rick
Hancox’s Waterworx (A Clear Day and No Memories),
in its moving tour past structure, through landscape, dominated
by hard blue sky, all woven with the Wallce Stevens poem, seems
often also all-of-a-weave with the late paintings of Jack Chambers.
Both celebrate a rural landscape as hard-edged and flat-coloured
as the mindscapes of elder Lawren Harris.” (Stan Brakhage,
Some Words on the North, American Book Review, May-June 1988)
“Waterworx
consists of eighteen shots of the filtration plant taken from
a slow-moving car and composed like moving tableaux. Because of
its sprawl, the plant is never seen in its entirety. The space
around the buildings is defined by the manicured lawns that end
in a low wall looking out over the lake. Because the buildings
are low and are approached by a descending drive, and because
the bluffs are high enough so a visitor looks out over the horizon,
one’s view of the sky over the lake is unusually expansive.
On the day(s) Hancox shot the film, the sky was the brilliant
cloudless blue and the air had the crystal cleaness not unusual
during the cooler seasons in southern Ontario. After a first ‘tour’
of the site in near silence, a second is taken with the Stevens
poem superimposed, one line at a time. The main pictorial device
of Waterworx is a boxed composition that fuses landscape
with architecture. A reinforced version of framing, this boxed
composition is articulated at three levels: the design of the
shots, the camera’s consistent position (as a withdrawn
and mobile presence), and symmetrical repetition of the montage
into two circuits through space.
The shot design
in Waterworx consistently places the rich blue sky and
water behind the yellow-buff colour of the walls and, by cooling
the deep blues of the sky and lake, define a high degree of contrast.
The inside/outside perceptual antimony McGregor describes is in
this film a subtle framing device: the gliding mobility of the
car moves through, yet stays withdrawn from the space it records,
but is itself never seen or felt as a presence in the space. The
doubled itinerary of the journey boxes in the image and the frame
by marking out a labyrinth around and through the buildings. In
fact, is is only after viewers have traveled through the maze
of the architecture of Waterworx that they are rewarded
with an unobstructed view of the infinite horizon of lake and
sky.
Finally, if
the visual composition of the film is boxed, the Stevens poem/wartime
song redoubles this enframement; it is here that one is subjected
to the most apparent inside/outside arrangement because it is
here that the image track is turned into an interior landscape—that
of memory. The scenery of Waterworx is transformed by
the words. They codify the Deco buildings into a past—someone’s
past, someone hearing the song from a past-that subjects space
and time to the work of a private, murmured memory.” (Bart
Testa, Spirit in the Landscape Catalogue, published by the Art
Gallery of Ontario, 1989)
Available
from:
Canadian
Filmmakers' Distribution Centre
37 Hanna Ave. #220
Toronto, Ontario Canada M6K 1W8
telephone: 416-588-0725, e-mail: bookings@cfmdc.org
web: www.cfmdc.org
Canyon
Cinema
145 Ninth Street, Suite 260, San Francisco, CA 94103
phone/fax: 415-626-2255 email: films@canyoncinema.com
web: www.canyoncinema.com
(printable
version of description)
Reviews,
Articles, Text & Notes:
A
masterwork of Art Deco, by John Bently Mays, The Globe
& Mail, July 29, 1992
Some
Words on the North, by Stan Brakhage, American Book Review,
May-June 1988
Waterworx
by Philippe Mather, Experimental Film Class, Concordia University,
April 8, 1987
The
Poetry-Film: Rick Hancox, by Scott MacDonald, Afterimage,
March 1986
Letter
to Rick Hancox, by Mike Hoolboom, June 6, 1984
Engaging
Poetry with Film: A Personal Statement by Rick Hancox
Words and Moving Images by William C. Wees and Michael Dorland,
eds. (Montreal: Mediatexte, 1984)
Excerpt
from an unpublished essay by Scott MacDonald
Waterworx
onscreen text (a transcription of a poem by Wallace Stevens)
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