A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.
- Director
- Awards
- 1 win
Photos
Storyline
Did you know
- Alternate versionsThis film was published in Italy in an DVD anthology entitled "Avanguardia: Cinema sperimentale degli anni '20 e '30", distributed by DNA Srl. The film has been re-edited with the contribution of the film history scholar Riccardo Cusin . This version is also available in streaming on some platforms.
- ConnectionsFeatured in These Amazing Shadows (2011)
Featured review
A Visual Love Song to Water
In the book The Immense Journey (1957) by American anthropologist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) is a wonderful quote--"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Twenty-eight years before Eiseley's book, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) created a short paean to water, a 12-minute silent film entitled "H20". He, incidentally was a cinematographer for the fine Pare Lorentz documentary, "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936).
Steiner's "H2O" film has a very brief introduction with rain the focus; it quickly becomes more abstract. Steiner is obviously fascinated by the remarkable kinetic action of water and how the motion created an endless variety of water reflections. This occupies half of the film. He then follows up with some brief textural aspects of the water, and finally ends with the effects of light on the ever-moving liquid--the shimmering, glowing, sparkling. With pattern merging into pattern, amazing abstractions appear, startling in their beauty. The film is an aquaphile's delight.
As an amateur still photographer, I've taken numerous water abstraction photos. I would love to see what a cinematographer might do with these water features in color. It's easy to envision a kaleidoscopic short which features the patterns created by reflections, the textures and the impact of light. The poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from the Leonard Cohen novel Beautiful Losers would aptly describe such an effort and does indeed describe what Steiner did in 1929.
Steiner's "H2O" film has a very brief introduction with rain the focus; it quickly becomes more abstract. Steiner is obviously fascinated by the remarkable kinetic action of water and how the motion created an endless variety of water reflections. This occupies half of the film. He then follows up with some brief textural aspects of the water, and finally ends with the effects of light on the ever-moving liquid--the shimmering, glowing, sparkling. With pattern merging into pattern, amazing abstractions appear, startling in their beauty. The film is an aquaphile's delight.
As an amateur still photographer, I've taken numerous water abstraction photos. I would love to see what a cinematographer might do with these water features in color. It's easy to envision a kaleidoscopic short which features the patterns created by reflections, the textures and the impact of light. The poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from the Leonard Cohen novel Beautiful Losers would aptly describe such an effort and does indeed describe what Steiner did in 1929.
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- dvh-70575
- Feb 26, 2023
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- Runtime13 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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