Who By Water (2007)

“Ship passengers are depicted staring wordlessly into the camera’s lens. All of their numbers have by now been called. And in staring back at them, we contemplate our own fate.”
Bill Morrison

Who By Water
Director: Bill Morrison.
Music: Michael Gordon.
USA 2007
17 min

Bill Morrison (b. 1965) is an interesting american director and artist. He is most famous for his experimental collage film Decasia (2002), where he, as in Who By Water, has put together pieces of decaying nitrate silent film.




The title Who By Water is taken from the traditional Rosh Hashanah passage:

[...] who will live and who will die;
who will die at his predestined time and who before his time;
who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast,
who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm,
who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning.
Who will rest and who will wander,
who will live in harmony and who will be harried,
who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer,
who will be impoverished and who will be enriched,
who will be degraded and who will be exalted. [...]

“Bill Morrison’s films are as much celebrations of the sometimes-frightening beauty of decomposing film as laments for vanishing relics of cinema’s origin.”
Senses of Cinema