[Frameworks] doc/exp sports film suggestions

[Christine Downing]

Will Hindle, "Watersmith," 1969
https://bostonhassle.com/review-watersmith-1969-dir-will-hindle/
Boston Hassle 5/16/2016

*Watersmith* (1969) is Hindle’s longest film at 32 minutes. It was made
during the height of his productivity and critical praise, on the heels of
his surrealistic fantasy film, *Chinese Firedrill* (1968), of which film
theorist Gene Youngblood has said contains “possibly one of the great
scenes in the history of film.” Fantastically surreal it
is–*Watersmith *unearths
a hidden “world within a world” of ethereal particles, lines, and shapes
moving across the screen in ways unaccustomed to our limited eyes. More
concretely, the film is a document of an Olympic swim team practice. It
begins inauspiciously with a shot of two swimmers changing in a murky
locker room before heading out to the pool, and the practice begins…

Beyond this early point in the film, divisions of time marked by events
come rarely. The swimmers repetitively swim lengths of the pool to hypnotic
effect. Their bodies are captured by Hindle’s camera from many uncommon
angles—diagonally from a very close distance; tracked underwater from in
front; peered at the tops of their heads while hovering over the pool. He
establishes their presence as physical bodies by exhausting their range of
motion in the pool, and then transfigures their form: Gradually, what were
once biological limbs are replaced by energy and light. The pool’s water is
no longer just the natural matter that gave the team their resistance to
swim through; it’s a medium on which Hindle can playfully experiment with
color tinting, multiple exposures, travelling mattes
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_(filmmaking)>, and dreamlike lap
dissolves.

<https://bostonhassle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Hindle_Watersmith2-1.jpg>



On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 10:32 AM jjmartinod <jjmartinod at protonmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello frameworkers,
> Working on something new and am looking for references of
> documentary/experimental short films on sports.
> Would any have links/references to anything close to the topic?
> Deeply appreciated.
> salud,
> j-j
>
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