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Director
Joe Comerford
Credits
Producer: Joe Comerford. Writer: Joe Comerford
Principal Cast
Therese Lawlor, Brian Bourke, Paddy O'Neill
Category
ShortExperimental
Waterbag was made as a preparation for the 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 frame-by-frame on transparent 16mm film, all with the purpose of asking: “Was it the choice of the foetus not to be born?”
Noes by Eugene Finn
13 minutes, Ireland, 1984, Colour
ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME: ST. PATRICK’S MISCELLANY 13.10
BROKER 18.10
CLOSE 18.00
GOD’S CREATURES 13.50, 18.40, 20.50
TÁR 15.30
THE BEASTS 15.10, 20.10
THE FIVE DEVILS 16.00, 20.45
WILD STRAWBERRIES: THE BIG HIT 11.00
WOMEN TALKING 13.00
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council