Double Tide
Sharon Lockhart, USA/Austria
2009, 99 min
International Premiere
16 February 2010
Delphi Filmpalast, Berlin
With: Jen Casad
For two weeks each year in South Bristol, Maine, low tide occurs twice within daylight hours—once at dawn and once at dusk. From the perspective of her stationary camera, filmmaker Sharon Lockhart documents the progress of a solitary clammer (Jen Casad) in these magic hours as she hauls her heavy skid out into the shallow cove and makes her way across the mudflat.
The clammer works for 45 minutes in the fog of dawn. Slowly, sunlight touches the landscape. Colors and features emerge, a Japanese landscape painting come to life. These are momentous events.
No words or music accompany the clammer at her centuries-old, physically demanding, solitary work. The intermittent buzz of an insect, the slap of boots in mud, a sharp sucking pop as she pulls clams from their nests, the dull thunk as they land in her bucket, a distant foghorn.
The screens breaks to black, then the 45-minute cycle repeats in the late afternoon, twilight sun, blue sky. A completely different picture – somehow the clammer seems much bigger, her world smaller.
Once she finds something that hurts – says “Oh!” and pulls back her hand. She tires, her hand seems to cramp. A cough. Nearby children’s voices as she finishes her work, washing heavy buckets of clams as darkness falls.
Double Tide is Lockhart’s fourth film about work (after (NÅ, Lunch Break and Exit):
“Clamming is a profession as old as there have been human inhabitants of this area. It hasn’t really changed in all that time. It is a very difficult job but it is one that is open to anyone who has a license and is willing to work. I was interested in the contrast between the simplicity of clamming and the complexity and alienation of other contemporary jobs. Clamming is a job that can’t be replaced with industrialized labor but still is threatened in the state of Maine by cheap clams from Canada and the effects of climate change.”
Lockhart has also presented Double Tide as an installation – two 30-ft volumes turned inward with both 45-minute scenes playing simultaneously, so that the viewer can stand between the panels and view them together or separately, back and forth, comparing. But I am glad to see it presented in the jewel box that is Delphi.
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