screenings
notes / stills
from Senses of Cinema issue no. 43, april-june 2007.
Short: As Long As It Takes
The 36th Rotterdam International Film Festival
January 24 February 4, 2007
by Genevieve Yue
John Price reconstructed the first Canadian film ever made in View of the Falls from the Canadian Side (2006), using a camera built to the same specifications as the one used in 1896 by William Heise. Price's film seemed to combine the awareness of that history into something utterly new; the camera's unique disposition brings pulsations of light, like ripples of water, over a cluster of tourists who are also positioning their cameras to photograph Niagara Falls. The wavering of light and the blurring on the edges of the screen suggests that the film is always on the brink of abstraction the shots of the Falls alone, in fact, often wander into this realm, as seen in several takes that play directly on the surface of the screen in washes of grays. The image gradually sharpens into focus and then out again. Edison and Dickson's camera appears wonderfully suited to translating the mutability of water to the play of light on the cinema screen, and through his re-viewing, Price captures something of the original awe that Heise must have felt just to marvel at what the camera can reveal.