• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

SLATE NORTH and EASY THERE TIGER KISS THE WATER A film by Eric Steel Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2013 Offcial Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013 Official Selection Woods Hole Film Festival 2013 Official Selection Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2013 Official Selection Vancouver International Film Festival 2013 Run Time: 80 mins. Aspect ratio: 16.9 Brief synopsis: Megan Boyd's entire world -- her life, livelihood, longing and love -- was wrapped up in her mysterious fishing flies -- bits of exotic feather, fur and fancy tinsel spun around a tiny metal hook. In every strand, in every fibre there was a story, a fairy tale, a truth -- waiting to be unraveled. Synopsis: In a cottage in northern Scotland, Megan Boyd twirled bits of feather, fur, silver and gold into elaborate fishing flies -- at once miniature works of art and absolutely lethal. Wherever men and women cast their lines for the mighty Atlantic salmon, her name is whispered in mythic reverence, and stories about her surface and swirl like fairy tales. With breathtaking cinematography and expressive, hand painted animation, KISS THE WATER adheres to and escapes from traditional documentary form, spinning the facts and fictions of one woman life into a stunning film about craft, devotion, love, and its illusions. Director’s Statement For as long as I can remember, I have been reading the obituaries in The New York Times first thing every morning. It sounds like a morbid fascination, but I don’t read them to see who has died, but to let my mind wander into the lives of others, perhaps searching for clues or clarity or examples of how to find and follow my own path. Ten years ago – long before I had made THE BRIDGE or imagined that I would actually be a filmmaker – I found the obituary of Megan Boyd, a woman who made fantastic fishing flies from a tiny cottage along the remote northern coast of Scotland. I am not a fisherman, had never been to Scotland, and don’t eat salmon – so there was no immediate reason I should have found her story all that interesting. And yet I cut it out, and pinned it to the wall near my desk. And then I made THE BRIDGE – and I learned some important things about my craft and about people. What I discovered, watching the Golden Gate Bridge for most of an entire year – was that if I stared at something long enough, I began to get glimpses of things others could not or would not notice. And I came to understand just how significant the difference was between the image one presents to the world, on the surface – and what one might be feeling and living inside, beneath the surface. So when I returned to the story of Megan Boyd, I began to wonder if her life had been the gilded fairy tale her obituary suggested – or if I was missing something, between the lines, under the surface. For more than a decade I had been reading the words over and over – until I could recite them by heart: Megan Boyd, whose fabled expertise at tying enchantingly delicate fishing flies put her work in museums and the hands of collectors around the world and prompted Queen Elizabeth II to award her the British Empire Medal, died Nov. 15 in Golspie, Scotland. She was 86. From tiny strands of hair she made magic: the classic Scottish flies like the Jock Scott, Silver Doctor and Durham Ranger and the fly named after her, the Megan Boyd, a nifty blue and black number famous for attracting salmon at the height of summer, when the water is low, hot and dead. With a very small, intrepid crew I began to stare at her life, letting myself wander in her footsteps. I collected all the stories about her from people who knew her – wonderful tales from great characters in their own right. And I spent long days peering into her window and out through her window -- of her now abandoned and collapsing cottage. We marched up alongside the rivers and glens of the spectacular Scottish countryside and looked out over the grey expanse of the North Sea. And I tracked down the last few people in the world willing to try their hand at making the complex, miniature fishing flies that Megan had created – whispering her patterns (as if they were magic spells) and twirling bits of feathers (many from birds that are largely extinct or endangered) and gold and silver tinsel around tiny metal hooks (because nowadays most fishing flies are made with plastic and superglue!). And I listened to fly fisherman give me their theories on why salmon favored Megan’s flies over all others – what secret magic hers might have contained – because salmon, unlike trout, don’t need to eat in the rivers, they don’t need to go after bait. They come back to the river for just one thing – to spawn, for love. Salmon fishing is all about the seduction. A part of me wanted to believe that Megan Boyd was the content woman everyone made her out to be – all alone in her little cottage, happily spinning away like mad, never lonely. Until one of her students told me that she once said to him: “You make the flies to catch the fisherman, not the fish.” And I began to see finally, or perhaps just to imagine, that she must have had longings of her own – a desire to be spun around and danced with and romanced, the way the fishermen used her flies to seduce the fish. KISS THE WATER was created from this very unorthodox marriage of facts, fictions, and fairy tale – in almost exactly the same manner in which Megan Boyd twirled bit of feather, fur and fine threads into her miniature works of art. There is a formal, delicate and original patterning to the way the film (edited by Sabine Krayenbühl) weaves together interviews, the craft of fly tying, and landscapes (filmed by Ole Birkeland) with the expressive, hand-painted animation of Em Cooper and the classical music composed by Paul Cantelon. The animations are not illustration or reenactment – they are like the reconstruction of her dream life, as I imagined them. Their roots are in the words people told me, the images I filmed, but their flight path is wholly of my imagination. At some point, the distinctions between facts and fictions, riddles and answers become immaterial. About the Crew: ERIC STEEL – Director/Producer Eric Steel began his career as a creative executive at Walt Disney Pictures after graduating from Yale University in 1985. Later he worked as a Vice President at Cinecom, at the time the leading art film distributor. Shifting gears, he took a position as an Editor at Simon & Schuster and then as a Senior Editor at HarperCollins, where he published many noted and award winning books of fiction and non-fiction. In 1995, he became Senior Vice President of Scott Rudin Productions. Along with the acquisition and development of many of the company’s most prominent feature projects, he was the Executive Producer of ANGELA’S ASHES, and Co- Producer of BRINGING OUT THE DEAD and SHAFT. In 2003, Eric Steel formed his own company, Easy There Tiger. THE BRIDGE, Eric Steel’s directorial and documentary debut, premiered at the Tribeca International Film Festival in 2005 and was released theatrically across the United States and around the world in 2006. Stephen Holden, in The New York Times, wrote THE BRIDGE is “one of the most moving and brutally honest films about suicide ever made.” MTV selected THE BRIDGE as the best documentary of the year. Eric Steel optioned, developed and produced (with Amy Robinson and Laurence Mark) JULIE & JULIA – directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. The film was a Golden Globe nominee for Best Picture (Comedy or Musical). KISS THE WATER had its world premier at the Tribeca International Film Festival in April 2013. Eric Steel’s other credits include: ANGELA’S ASHES (1999) as Executive Producer and as Co: Producer: SHAFT (2000) and BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999). ANDREA CALDERWOOD – Executive Producer Andrea began her career as a freelance production manager in Scotland, producing documentaries, short dramas and music videos with independent company Crash Films, before being appointed Head of Drama at BBC Scotland. She then joined Pathe Pictures as their Head of Production, executive producing eight feature films including AN IDEAL HUSBAND, RATCATCHER and THE CLAIM. Through her own production company, Slate Films, Andrea's producer credits include Mike Figgis' experimental digital film HOTEL; Shane Meadows' ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS; Kevin Macdonald's THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (winner of 3 BAFTAs and the Oscar for Forest Whitaker); HBO's acclaimed GENERATION KILL: I AM SLAVE, directed by Gabriel Range and written by Jeremy Brock; executive producer on two series¹ of David Kane's THE FIELD OF BLOOD for the BBC; and Eric Steel¹s fly fishing documentary, KISS THE WATER. Andrea has recently completed producing HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, based on the Orange prize winning novel by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Joseph Mawle and Anika Noni Rose, the film has been written and directed by Nigerian novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele. Andrea is currently producing A LITTLE CHAOS, directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts. Slate Films joined forces with Potboiler Productions in 2009. KATE SWAN – producer Kate started her career as a film festival organiser, documentary researcher, and producer of short drama films, co-founding Crash Films with Andrea Calderwood and Douglas Mackinnon in 1988.

Load more

  13

Copy Link