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Andy Goldsworthy - Rivers and Tides: Working With Time (2003)
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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:19
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.8/10
Consensus: Andy Goldsworthy and his art are beautifully captured in this engaging documentary.
Theatrical Release:Jun 26, 2002 Limited
Synopsis:
RIVERS AND TIDES, Thomas Riedelsheimer's mind-blowing new film which won the Golden Gate Award Grand Prize for Best Documentary at this year's San Francisco Int Film Fest follows renowned sculptor...
RIVERS AND TIDES, Thomas Riedelsheimer's mind-blowing new film which won the Golden Gate Award Grand Prize for Best Documentary at this year's San Francisco Int Film Fest follows renowned sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as he creates with ice, driftwood, bracken, leaves, stone, dirt, and snow in open fields, beaches, rivers, creeks and forests.
Andy Goldsworthy knows that most of his pieces will not last long because of where he makes them. Some of his works stand and remain in the landscape; others decay, melt or are blown away. His work's transitory nature, in fact, is a central part of the sculptor's creative efforts to understand the energy that flows through him and through the natural landscape that nourishes his vision. In this contemplative and beautifully insightful film, we see Goldsworthy as he works to understand that energetic flow, represented often by water, by wind or simply the passage of seasons. Both carefully composed and fluid, RIVERS AND TIDES keeps its focus on the artist's vision and work, giving us room to ponder our own relationship to the energy coursing through the natural world.
The director worked with Andy Goldsworthy for over a year to shoot this remarkable film. What he found was a profound sense of breathless discovery and uncertainty in Goldsworthy's work, in contrast to the stability of conventional sculpture. There is risk in everything Goldsworthy does. He takes his fragile work right to the edge of its collapse, a very beautiful balance and a very dramatic edge within the film. RIVERS AND TIDES captures the essential unpredictability of working with nature and, like Goldsworthy's suclpture, grows into something beyond the simple making of an object. It touches the heart of what Goldsworthy does and who he is. It is a film that allows "you to see something you never saw before, that was always there but you were blind to." -- © Roxie Releasing
Starring: Andy Goldsworthy
Starring: Andy Goldsworthy
Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
Composer: Fred Frith
Studio: Roxie Releasing
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Reviews for Andy Goldsworthy - Rivers and Tides: Working With...
The artistry of Thomas Riedelsheimer's film perfectly compliments Goldsworthy's art.
[Goldsworthy's] art is meant to be evanescent, like the nature he reveres. We are privileged to see it documented by the filmmaker's camera.
Mr. Goldsworthy's work is meant to be photographed -- 'photography is the way that I talk about my sculptures,' he says -- and Mr. Riedelsheimer rises to the occasion.
Assumes a meditative, Zen-like quality that sends the viewer floating away, like a leaf.
We grab at beauty while simultaneously realizing it never can be possessed, a feeling brilliantly captured in this thoughtful and rewarding movie.
The sort of film that sounds completely kooky until you see it. At which point it's still pretty kooky, but you realize just how cool kooky can still be.
Watching Goldsworthy painstakingly piece together his artwork, we come to realize that his artistry lies as much in the act of creation as in the fleeting final product.
The trouble with this art movie is that it's more a movie than it's art.
I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.
Intoxicating and meditative by turns, helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a singular creative mind.
Even after seeing Rivers and Tides, there's still a lot we don't know about how he works.
As the film's images accumulate, the movie becomes a sustained and ultimately refreshing meditation on surrender to the idea of temporality.
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