By Narda Liotine

To say cinema is a matter of movement tout court is something I personally don’t agree with: To experience film format as a big canvas should imply that one is able to explore every single fragment of a reel and contemplate their unique beauty.  Since Joris Ivens’the notion of individualization of the film format has been put to question so many times that now this “theory of uniqueness” now shatters on the shores of the indivisible.

In the short film Regen (Rain, 1929) by Ivens and Mannus Franken, the gazing of the oscillation and fluttering of water turns in a successful effort of meta-cinema where water becomes a restless and rough main character of a wet game in which motions are never ending. What Ivens did back then, filming the Amstel River in Amsterdam, Korean filmmaker Jeon June-Hyuck does now, filming the Han River in Seoul, achieving an accurate quoting of the master’s original work.

Wave’s shatters in a similar manner: Both on the boats of Amstel River and on the Han’s bridge piers. Water dialogues with human manufactured structures – concrete piers, boats – as shouting its eternal permanence against time and space. Following its pattern, the filmmaker builds an altered proportion between the light and the images to a point where one can recognize the nitrate deterioration which affected Ivens’ work before its restoration: The old decay possession of the digital version pays a good tribute to its model.

The Peer interferes with water and vice versa. Light interferes with the water surface. Light, water and oxide interfere with nitrate film. Water: both protagonist and antagonist. Just like the rain that falls in Amstel River pierces the water surface, nitrate decay perforates the film surface. This film about movement with no plot tells the simple story of a river in a rainy day and evocates this erudite and marvelous work, more than eighty years after its conception.

Director: Jeon June-Hyuck
Writers: Jeon June-Hyuck
Producers: Jeon June-Hyuck
Cinematographer: Jeon June-Hyuck
Music: Jeon June-Hyuck
KOREA
7  mins
Competition ? Korean Short Films Competition