“As soon as we give material imagination its rightful place in imaginary cosmologies, we shall realize that freshwater is the true mythical water”. (Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams, 1942)

 

Freshwater accounts for approximately 3% of the Earth’s total water supply and encompasses rivers, lakes, streams, waterfalls, and groundwater. Far from being static, it manifests as a mutable and dynamic entity, recalling the perceptual instability of Impressionist reflections shaped by shifting light.

 

The 9 experimental short films presented here, poised between imagination and materiality, interrogate not only the geographical configurations that give freshwater its form, but also its function as a singular aquatic mirror.

 

Like the cinematic screen, freshwater becomes a reflective surface through which visions of the world are constructed and refracted. Falling, flying, and flowing, water reveals reflective, unstable, and abstract properties that resonate with the formal and conceptual concerns of experimental cinema.