Waterworx (A Clear Day and No Memories) (1982)

Overview

The waterworks in the beaches area of Toronto is the source of an image, perhaps eidetic, from my early childhood. It always had an enigmatic quality, and even after returning years later to shoot this film. I was still not satisfied that it was merely a filtration plant - its architecture functioned more metaphorically. Wallace Steven's ironic and equally enigmatic poem 'A Clear Day and No Memories' was brought into the film later to address these issues, and to provide an interruptive graphic function for the same reasons the style of editing is interruptive, that is, to both underscore the alluring nature of the image, and to force an intellectual distancing. Just as the supposedly clear air is used as the protagonist in Steven's poem, the Precisionist clarity of the imagery is foreground in Waterworx, while the soundtrack develops the air's subtext.

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