Waterbag | Irish Artist's Film Index

Waterbag

Joe Comerford


Artist's biography

Joe Comerford

Synopsis

'Waterbag was made as a preparation for Comerford's feature Reefer and the Model. Set on a fishing trawler,it involves the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman and ends with an apparently self-induced miscarriage. Haunting slow-motion images of a swaying rocking horse accompany composer Roger Doyle’s score (a music box nursery rhyme), bringing Waterbag to an enigmatic, moving finish. As in Emtigon, and later RoadSide, the filmmaker experiments with combinations of live action and abstraction: “I was attempting to alter the form of the film’s language, enabling an altogether different visual flow. The idea was to test the standard procedure of using dialogue to convey narrative by replacing it with abstract imagery. This meant shooting the film twice – firstly, in a conventional way, with actors, and, secondly, retelling the story in abstract form by painting frameby-frame on transparent 16mm film, all with the purpose of asking: “Was it the choice of the foetus not to be born?”' (Sourced from http://www.ifi.ie/wp-content/uploads/Joe-Comerford-Painting-a-Feature-by-Eugene-Finn1.pdf on June 12th 2016)


Images

Details
Title

Waterbag

Year

1984

Form

Short

Key phrases

absolute, abstract live action, lyrical, portrait, trance, pregnancy, docklands (dublin, ireland)

Language

English (eng)

Duration

00:09:00

Original formats

Physical: Film: 16mm

Aspect ratio

to be confirmed

Colour

Mixture

Sound

Yes

Supported by Kildare County Council Arts Service, the Arts Council of Ireland and Visual Artists Ireland.
© 2016 - 2024 Irish Artist's Film Index. All rights reserved.