Marleen van der Werf

‘time and tide’ (tijd en tij) is a cinematic essay questioning the representation of nature in film.

In the ever-changing coastal scenery, filmmaker Marleen van der Werf observes the tides of the wind. Instead of focusing on action, the camera captures voids of stillness.
The result is an unconventional portrait of a coastal area, confronting the viewers with their own expectations of nature in film.  

‘time and tide’ is filmed at the North Sea coast, on the island Terschelling and in Bergen.
This project is part of the Teledoc Campus and currently in production with support of the Dutch Film Fund, Mediafonds, Cobo Fonds, Dutch Mountain Film and Wild Work Productions.

* The film premiered at the Dutch Film Festival where it was nominated for a ‘Gouden Kalf’
* Winner Horn Film Festival 2019
* Winner Plons! film festival 2019
* Winner 13th First Frame festival 2019
* Winner Golden Ger Film Festival 2020
* Faito DOC Festival 2020 – Winner Grand Prix

Jury comments 13th First Frame festival:
“Time and Tide is not for everyone, but we should all watch it: it just takes a little patience and this documentary-experimental realization will reveal one new nature, and perhaps the very nature of documentary, since it is an observational documentary, and she is brought to perfection here.
Brilliant photography and precise editing and directing have made the film’s protagonist, weather, sand, water and wind.”

Words by the jury of the Horn festival:
“We found in this film hints to many different cinematic genres, including nature and sci-fi films from the 1950’s, by which the film illuminates the enormous drama that happens in the lives of the smallest “characters” nature has to offer. The film includes cinematography that is outstanding, and an excellent work of sound design, adding to the horror and drama of nature. In this film, beauty becomes tragedy and yet the film leaves us with a hopeful gaze at the horizon.”

Review of ‘time and tide’ by Cineaste Magazine at the Thessaloniki Film Festival:
“Two of the masterpieces of the festival were Animus Animalis and the short Time and Tide. Though very different in style and approach, both were linked by a knowledge that cinema is not a slide projection of “wow” shots, but the result of a profound engagement with a subject to produce an appropriate audiovisual means of communicating it; a sensitivity to light and texture; a commitment to process and the revelatory detail; and, most importantly, a musical facility with editing in sound and image, a basic yet too often overlooked knowledge that each shot is transformed by that preceding and following it.

Time and Tide, as its clichéd title suggests, is both modest and epic, microscopic and cosmic. It takes an unpromising patch of one of the dullest parts of the world, a sand dune in Holland, and, much like Godard’s cup of coffee in Two or Three Things I Know About Her, finds the universe in it. As in the early, silent films of her Dutch and Flemish predecessors, Joris Ivens and Henri Storck, Marleen van der Werf creates the visual equivalent of a musical tone poem, orchestrating a storm into four movements: 1) Calm before the storm; 2) The storm; 3) Aftermath; and 4) Tentative resumption of calm.

We are drawn into this imaginative yet strictly observational majesty by a small earwig struggling to walk over sand, falling over and down the dunes in the increasingly powerful gust. This minuscule activity alerts us to the scale of tiny life invisible in the film’s wider shots, and the upheaval and destruction that will be unleashed on this seemingly uninhabited spot. Framing, camera movement, the rhythm within and between shots, build up to a tremendous crescendo and its gradual, uncertain fall. The winds uncover layered evidence for human, animal and vegetal presence over the millennia. By the end, as some sort of polyp covered in sand tries to breathe through an open blowhole, I felt a rare sense of happiness and wonder of the sort that Terrence Malick always promises but never delivers. This is a film with deep roots not just in the cinema but also in the art of the Low Countries, an art that rejected the Renaissance idealism of gods, heroes, and beauties, and looked at the apparently humdrum but actually inexhaustible and remarkable life surrounding them.”
Read the full review here:
https://www.cineaste.com/summer2019/thessaloniki-documentary-film-festival-2019?fbclid=IwAR1NNLA7o3zfXhzNoAvKQU6jBjn6GOScE0zUH5nauVabdkXyvLDNoMQD2HM

§De gedragingen van de dieren in de film lijken een metaforische betekenis te hebben, waarin kringloop en drang om te overleven centraal staat, maar nergens wordt dat een nadrukkelijk dominant thema. Het lukt de maker om de kijker zich betrokken te laten voelen met het wel en wee van de natuur. De apotheose is verrassend. Minutenlang zien we een veranderende zee, we kijken naar een zee zoals we er nog nooit naar gekeken hebben.”

Recensie ‘tijd en tijd’ van Walter van der Kooi in De Groene Amsterdammer:
“In de buurt van meesterproef komt Tijd en tij van Marleen van der Werf. Beelden van Noord-Hollandse duinen en strand door het jaar heen. Gaap, gaap. Nee: beeldschoon zonder dat het Schönfilmerei wordt. Geen mens in beeld. De enige die poseert is een eenzame Schotse hooglander die langdurig van verre naar de camera kijkt. Van luchten en zeegezichten in weidsheid tot close opnamen van insecten en een waaiend dood helmgrasje dat een cirkel tekent in het zand – langdurig, geduldig en precies. Zo fraai als de titel, zo fraai de cinematografie en het ritme van de montage. Die weer recht doet aan het ritme van de natuur, in seizoen en afwisseling van weersomstandigheden. Geen mens te horen ook: wat een verademing – een natuurfilm zonder verteller.
Allemachtig, wat kan ze kijken en wat kunnen wij dankzij haar kijken.”

Film Festival that selected ‘time and tide’:

Netherlands Film Festival 2018 – Nominated for a Golden Calf Best Short Documentary
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2019
Docaviv 2019 – Shorts Competition
Bogotá Experimental Film Festival/CineAutopsia 2019
Marienbad Film Festival 2019
PLONS! International Short Documentary Film Festival Leeuwarden 2019
Tirana International Film Festival 2019 – Short Documentary Competition
Horn Festival 2019 – First Prize International Short Film Competition
International film Festival Prvi Kadar/First Frame 2019 – Winner Best International Documentary
International Nature Film Festival Gödöllő 2019
Torino Film Festival 2019
Noordelijk Film Festival
Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentaries and Shorts
Transcinema Festival Internacional de Cine 2019
Evropa Film Akt 2020 – Prix Sauvage Corto Competition
Ismailia International Film Festival 2020 – Short Documentary Competition
NOFLASH Video Show 2020 – Prix Sauvage Corto
Golden Ger International Film Festival Mongolia 2020 – Winner Best International Short Documentary
Globe International Silent Film Festival 2020
Kyiv International Short Film Festival 2020
Faito DOC Festival 2020 – Winner Grand Prix

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