Purple Diary
[February 4 2010]
The Anchorage, a film by Anders Edström and C.W. Winter
The Anchorage, a film by Anders Edström and C.W. Winter
I was knocked out the other night watching Anders Edström and C.W. Winter’s first feature-length film, The Anchorage, at Le Fémis in Paris. Last year the film won the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award. The starkly simple story is an incredible visual and sonic cinema experience. Shot during three weeks in October on small a Baltic island in Sweden, an older woman, who lives alone in a sequestered house, is made anxious by the sudden appearance of a hunter she’s never seen before. With a brief voice-over and minimum dialogue, the 87-minute film reifies three days of her life in a concentration of long pans and quick cuts, each rich with ambient sound and stimulating visual textures. The result is the purest of cinema experiences. Edström, a master at incarnating light, was a long-time Purple photographer, since 1992. In this film he further proves his special genius. Los Angles-based C.W. Winter wrote the short script and was the film’s formal mastermind. Their collaboration is refreshing and unique, as is their film. A new project is now in the planning stages. Text by Jeff Rian
