We're thrilled for our upcoming co-presentation with Arkansas Cinema Society of the new documentary from National Geographic Documentary Films, Time and Water. This majestic portrait of Iceland, family, and the passage of time screens on Wednesday, April 8 at 6:30 PM at Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Tickets are available here.
In anticipation of this special event, we'd like to share thoughts from the documentary's Oscar-nominated director, Sara Dosa.
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IN A TIME when the violence of the climate crisis ravages the earth, we need stories that can act as maps for our shifting world. TIME AND WATER is a gesture toward such a map, one that traces the ice of Iceland through the human story of one family, anchored by the first-person perspective and expansive archives of celebrated writer Andri Snaer Magnason.
To illustrate the interconnectedness of humans and glaciers, our narrative arc braids the story of Andri’s grandparents with the glaciers and oceans that have sustained their lives and those of generations of Icelanders before them.
As Andri’s grandfather Arni’s memory recedes, so too does Iceland’s ice. A story of the earth, which has been frozen for millennia inside glaciers, is rapidly melting away. But, through the framing of our film as a time capsule, which is also a nod to Andri’s work as a poet and sci-fi author, we illustrate how the transmission of stories and memories into the future can be an act of not just holding onto our beloved present world, but a way of dreaming up possibilities for a habitable future.
We think of the film as polytemporal: existing across multiple timescales at once. And our editing style juxtaposes collaged archival materials with our originally shot footage, creating an interplay that bends and folds time. The associative flow of these images evokes subjective memory, echoing how glaciers themselves hold the frozen layered imprints of planetary history.
The future is unwritten, and what we do now matters.
Our cinematography was focused on how time is expressed through systems of water: glaciers, fog, rivers and the sea. We shot in both digital and 16 mm formats to create a cinematic language that could dialogue with our archival materials, becoming bridges to the past and present.
Finally, the film maintains a sensitive tone, given the story of dementia and death at its heart.... Through Andri’s narration, the film sheds light on the tragic, incomparable effects of Árni’s memory loss, revealing broader truths about the human experience of time....
The future is unwritten, and what we do now matters. Too much hope can lull us into complacency, while too much dread can convince us the future is already lost. Uncertainty, however, invites agency. It reminds us that our actions in this unstable present shape the world our loved ones will inherit.
-Sara Dosa