Eaux d'Artifice

Directed by Kenneth Anger

A visually rapturous, wordless meditation on a solitary woman moving through baroque fountains and gardens, where sensory beauty and ambiguous emotion take precedence over narrative.

A woman dressed elegantly walks purposely through the water gardens at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, as the music of Vivaldi's Winter movement of The Four Seasons plays. Heavy red filters give a blue cast to the light; water plays across stone, and fountains send it into the air. No words are spoken. Baroque statuary and the sensuous flow of water are back lit. Anger calls it water games.