gavin6942 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." Based on what I've read, many have considered this among Anger's best, or his masterpiece, and it is apparently very influential. For me, I just did not care for it. I get that he shot it very beautifully and the use of tinting and light make this something of a moving painting. But, you know, it does not have that imagery I expect from his work.

preppy-3 Pointless (and deadly dull) short film by Kenneth Anger. It involves a small woman (called the Water Witch I believe) wandering around this place with tons of gushing water. Then at the end she becomes a fountain. Swear to God--that's it! Anger's early films are an acquired taste. I did like "Fireworks", "Puce Moment" and "Rabbits Moon" but the popularity of this has always escaped me. I've seen it multiple times and (more often than not) found myself struggling to stay awake! Anger's beautiful imagery seems to be missing here. Just a bunch of gushing water and a midget running around in a bizarre outfit is not enough to keep me interested. How this got on the list of film to be preserved is beyond me. "Fireworks" is MUCH better than this--but I guess "Fireworks" is too homo erotic. I personally can't stand this one but many others seem to think it's a masterpiece. Use your own judgment.

Polaris_DiB So far as I've seen, Kenneth Anger has kept mainly to stage-like productions of silent films with a lot of art concepts that appeal to me. This one is so far the one I like the most. Anger shoots in blue-tinted black and white again, this time in a water-sculpture park in Italy.Eaux D'Artifice, Anger explains, is a pun on "Feux D'Artifice" which means "firework." Most of the shots in this film deal predominantly with light as it refracts through the water, in many cases making images that are very resemblant to fireworks. Eaux D'Artifice could also in a way mean "Water Sculpture", which is often what Anger builds this film around.Anger's choice of a protagonist was a very good one. Her size does indeed make the park look bigger and more fantastic, and I think this is Anger's most effective creation of imaginary and dreamlike realms. This movie is very reminiscent of fantasy book covers and paintings that seem to somehow attract many people by a sense of serene mysticism and magical perplexity. Somehow this film reaches to an internal need for magic and alternate worlds, which I feel is very related to our obsession with dreams.--PolarisDiB

EyeAskance A stunning water garden is the empyrean setting for this short film, one of the director's strongest works. The ceaseless motion of liquid in an elaborate fountain-system is given close study in high-contrast black and white...jets, streams and droplets dance madly to classical music as the water becomes seemingly enlivened with a zoetic personality. The mood shifts with the music's dramatic rise-and-fall, being somber and wintry one moment, majestic and powerful the next. Intermittently, a shadowy figure in period costume moves hurriedly through the scenery, adding even further mystique to the proceedings. Mesmerizing in its organic beauty...a small masterwork. 9/10