WATER AND BLOOD (2021)

Video 4K, Color, Stereo, 2.39:1 aspect ratio (panoramic),  21:51 min., loop, dimensions variable, immersive experience in dark room

Water and blood is filmed in the Argentinian countryside, in an area known as “The Danish triangle”, 700 km South from Buenos Aires capital city. The Danish immigration started to arrive to this area in 1849 and in the next 70 years they would become about 13.000 Danish immigrants, making the Danish colony one the 14 most important ones to settle in Argentina.

Water and blood tries to articulate a fact versus fiction ambivalence. The film is constructed as a collage through a non-linear narrative, gathering long tableaux-takes that are becoming scenes, based in some characters related to this colony, and letting the viewer to look and contemplate what evolves inside the image through the pass of time. The camera is fixed and the picture format is panoramic, playing a reference to the ‘moving image’ and at the same time to painting and the cinematic, specially the filmic genre of “western”.

Water and blood explores the theme of identity through these characters within the landscape, the hybridization of cultures and the quest of time. Today there are estimated 100.000 Argentinians belonging to Danish descendants. Indeed, Hein is himself one of them.

Credits. Non-actors: Luis Palmas, dancer; Gustavo Aastrup, rider; Cristian Larsen, surfer. Camera: Alejandro Talamaco Tarraf. Sound operator: Leonardo Cauteruccio. Editor: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. Grading: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen. Sound post: August Drenck. Director: Juan Hein.

Forårsudstilling 2021, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, DK.