Waterbag

[1984 / 7:30 mins / B&W/Colour / 16mm/Video / 4:3 format]

An experimental short, Waterbag, was made as preparation for the feature Reefer and the Model. Set on a fishing trawler, Waterbag is about the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman, and is shot in a playful early-cinema style. Each of the men relates a story of frustrated love in separate speaking ’to-camera’ video inserts. The rich spatial language of the film situates the woman (and her unborn child) in threatening, claustrophobic relation to the men. It ends dramatically, and ambiguously, below deck, with the woman’s desperate confinement. Waterbag is experimental at every level. Multiple voiceovers, intricate audio-visual collages and painted-over dramatic scenes are heightened by composer Roger Doyle’s ambient electronic score. As in Emtigon, and later RoadSide, the filmmaker experiments with combinations of live action and abstraction.