The Swamp is a powerfully visual and experimental film with a narrative undertone, based on the story of the same title by the Dutch writer A. Alberts, which is about a man who has withdrawn to a house behind a swamp. In the film, a traveller goes looking for the man, the house and the swamp. Finding the swamp is easy, although we aren’t sure it’s the writer’s swamp. The swamp of the film maker is in the Romanian Danube delta and provides sombre and mysterious images; more nightmares than dreams.
The traveller also finds a house. It’s on an island and was once a summer house belonging to the executed dictator Ceaucescu. In the ghostly house, the story – the writer’s fantasy – seems to come true. The traveller becomes entwined in a dream that is no longer his own. When the man is in the house at all, he hides. But why then does he lay the table? And why for three people?
The film gets more and more puzzling and mysterious, and in the end only the power of the images provides any grip for the viewers. The film maker says: ‘The Swamp, an area of transition between water and land, becomes a metaphor for the domain between illusion and reality.’ The film seems to be saying: The swamp, that’s me. A visual adventure without solid ground. (GjZ)
Film details
- Country of production
- Netherlands
- Year
- 2008
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2008
- Length
- 61"
- Medium/Format
- Betacam Digi PAL
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