Leviathan
Dirs. Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel USA 2012 86’ (12A)
French and Dutch with English subtitles | Digital video
Sailing the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick, Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s incredible film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in haunting yet beautiful detail. Employing an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to astonishing bird’s-eye views, Leviathan is unlike anything you have ever seen; a purely visceral, cinematic experience.
Leviathan screens here in response to the exhibition For All At Last Return in Baltic’s Level 4 Gallery.
‘The imagery is simply, bluntly majestic … it’s staggering cinema – proof that there are more things in heaven and below the sea that you can imagine, that there are new images waiting to be discovered.’ — Nick Pinkerton, Sight & Sound
‘These saturated, sublime images bear little comparison to any other film; rather, they evoke the work of artists such as Winslow Homer and JMW Turner. In fact, by attaching 21st-century cameras to themselves and the crew of the Athena, the directors were re-enacting Turner’s legendary feat, when he had his body lashed to the mast of a Harwich boat for four hours to experience a storm at sea face-to-face and thus render it in oil.’ — Philip Hoare, The Guardian
Part of Baltic Cinema’s Sources strand, exploring the themes of Baltic’s exhibitions.
Level 1 Cinema
Doors open 6.30pm; Film starts 6.45pm. Baltic Kitchen is open until 6.30pm for drinks, which you are welcome to take up to the cinema.
