Upwards Tide
5:30min, HD, 2022
Filmed between 2017 and 2021 on nights and days of the Full Moon; between the salt water shores of Loch Carron, the Scottish Highlands and the autumnal leaves of the Viennese forests. There are overlapping sounds, bodies and moonlight, gathering together like sediment on outdated stock, short ends and leftovers, gifted to me by friends and colleagues. (dz)
Even in silence, the moon exudes light. Or perhaps especially in silence, which may be one of the reasons Daniela Zahlner's magical film Upwards Tide begins its flow without a sound. It makes sense to get used to the bright spot of light, which is interspersed throughout the film, in something akin to its native environment - darkness and quiet - while the handheld analog camera is the only thing moving. Then we can dance with it better ourselves once the moon begins to bounce up and down, multiplied and superimposed, a ball of light and night punching delicate holes and entrances into worlds.
But, already in the next shot, we discover that the human body makes for a fine moonscape too, while a green-tinged belly, not unlike that of a creature just landed from the waters, rises like the tide with every breath. This is where water, wind, and sing-song voices begin to flow into the image as the filmmaker blends the lines between human and non-human with an insightful touch and ear. Soon we get our first glimpse of extraordinary figures recognizable as human by their shapes, but filled with images of the Scottish Highlands from within - nature and humanity inextricably knit together.
These bodies become one with the landscape through an action on the part of the filmmaker: superimposing images, peeling the world into layers, revealing the invisible and the imaginable as well as the unimaginable. So it is that shins and necks can now be made up of moss and lichen, as stones and brooks flow through legs and arms. A particularly beautiful image brings together a close-up of a face, one eye gently closed, with a purple slope of heather. What else could a body be if we gave it a chance, the time? Also, do places live in us or do we live in them? The film invites these questions and many more, as it explores surfaces and memories, skin and form, color and metamorphosis, using time and film material as its tools, all under the moon as its guiding light. Yes, there is a tide in Daniela Zahlner's film, the strongest one imaginable: It is the tide of being with, and never without. (Ivana Milos)