This film is part of Rentals
Estuary
Tides rise and fall and the landscape twists around the camera.
Director: Chris Welsby
Overview
Estuary presents a very different type of experience of film time and being to which we might ordinarily be familiar. Shot over three-days on a boat moored in the Keyhaven bay, fluctuations in tide, light, weather and cloud formation and the passing of day into night are captured through intermittent scanning of the horizon and pre-structured decisions about when to shoot and how.
Viewing Estuary is uncanny, meditative experience where simplicity becomes, at times, highly arresting. Perhaps akin to what is often now called slow cinema, it occupies an uncanny midway point between a metrological scientific experiment and a traditional landscape painting. A four second section of the film was exposed every fifteen minutes between dawn and dusk. For over fifty years now, artist Chris Welsby has explored the properties of the both landscape and weather systems through the formal qualities of film and digital. His works provides an important record of our changing relationship with the environment whilst highlighting the potential for far greater levels of sensitivities towards the worlds in which we, not just live, but are intrinsically part of and emanate.
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