Water Children - DaaVeeDee

Water Children (DVD) (*)

$28.99

Alternate Title: Water Children
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
Dutch ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Dutch ( Subtitles )
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Subtitles )
Japanese ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
Netherlands ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
75 min

Aspect Ratio:
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Anamorphic Widescreen
Interactive Menu
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 2011 and produced in:
Japan ( India, Eastern Asia )
Netherlands ( France, Benelux )

Directed By:
Aliona Van Der Horst

Written By:
Aliona Van Der Horst

Actors:
Aliona Van Der Horst

Synopsis:

Filmmaker Aliona van der Horst followed the trail of the unconventional Dutch-Japanese pianist and artist Tomoko Mukaiyama who made a huge work of art on the theme of womanhood and fertility. She created a cathedral-like space out of twelve thousand white silk dresses in which visitors, as in a ritual, roamed around and fell silent. And where people confessed intimate details about children who were or were not born, about sexuality and life-choices. This resulted in a majestic epic about motherhood, miscarriages and menopause. In a visual and poetic way, the film penetrates into what is probably still one of the greatest of taboos, menstruation, and, as a consequence, touches upon universal themes around life and death.

In Japan, dead babies are commemorated in a mythological ritual and known as water children. Because they never had an opportunity to carry out good deeds, they are unable to cross the underworld river and are trapped in stone figurines on a riverbank. Filmmaker Aliona van der Horst followed the unconventional Japanese-Dutch pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama. There came a moment in the pianist's life when she recognized that an end will come to her capacity to have children. Mukaiyama created a multimedia art project on the subject in a village in Japan. She made what she calls a cathedral, constructed out of 12,000 white silk dresses. She invites women to take a dress, wear it, stain it with menstrual blood (or, as she so poetically puts it, 'moon blood') and hang it back up. Female visitors to this fabric cathedral meet here to talk about issues surrounding fertility and infertility. Van der Horst tells the story from her own perspective. We also hear from other women who talk about their experiences with miscarriages, children, or thoughts about fertility and sexuality. Ultimately, it turns out that the filmmaker herself had a powerful personal reason for making this dreamlike, poetic film.

This product was added to our catalog on Saturday 10 March, 2012.

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