Overview
In 2023 we remember the 70th anniversary of the 1953 flood, de Watersnoodramp, the worst natural disaster in living memory in The Netherlands.
This experimental short animation is a result of the artistic research project Water Nation which researches the contradiction of the vast natural violence of water and the industrial machine ingenuity and hand labour of the Dutch through archives.
Water Nation is an exploration into felt experience, into the connection between the heard and the seen, into what happens within us when we connect to our feelings and history. This film is about resilience surfacing over disaster, about working against the immense power of natural forces, something that has been part of the nations history and which looms as a constant threat due to rising sea levels.
Water Nation unfolds Dutch identity and is inspired by Dutch archival material of flooding in the 20th century from the archives of the Dutch Institute of Sound & Vision. The archival video footage shows Dutch villages underwater and the human effort to control the force of water.
Director : Kim Spierenburg
