The other day I had the priviledge of watching Water mark, a film by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky at the 64 Berlinale edition.
I take pleasure in writing that watching watermark should be, in my judgment, a must-see experience for everyone who has a remote interest in human affairs, landscape and in what their mutual relationship shall be.
Water covers two-thirds of the earth.
Water is the very element that allows us to live, as two-thirds of our body consists of water.
Water should be then regarded as the most precious thing we have.
We are ‘marked’ by water and we mark ourselves by the relationship we establish with water.
‘Water connects people – whether they drink together, bathe in holy waters, or harness the energy of rivers and oceans’ says the authors.
Watermark reminds the audience of this simple, inescapable, notion―a ‘notion’ delivered in a non didactic, poetic manner that, just like a rising tide, slowly but steadily rises the audience’s own awareness of it.
The film covers twenty different sites in ten countries in a fashion that is, simultaneously, analytical, geometrical, monumental and, at times, even epical.
Like the very element it focuses upon―water, that is―the film manages to flood the viewer with an uninterrupted sequence of breathtakingly beautiful images delivering a powerful political statement: that by acting in the way we are acting, we are, in fact, in the process of becoming our own worst enemy by demolishing our own very habitat, whose richness, diversity and frailty should be more appreciated.
Is watermark going to become the much needed wake-up some have been waiting for?
The positive member of human race shall hope so.