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“FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER” director, Irena Salina
The obvious answer to that would be “cash flow.” But I would really like to combine it with organization.
Our film Flow took us to many countries like India, South Africa and Bolivia… in the space of five years… I first started with a small crew for the first two trips abroad and before I knew it — and with the exception of the U.S., which I did with Yvette, our co-producer, it was a one-man show: me, the camera and the sound…. Basically it was either that or no film, so I tried to let go of the panic as much as I could and like a true warrior went on along. The downside of this is that naturally when one has to handle everything and you are far away in often remote places under a tight schedule carrying your stuff, having to be spontaneous and at the same time running your camera as the wind and the dust hit you and you have to prepare your sound — it’s funny for an observer but stressful for the filmmaker. The good news is, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I learned so much from this experience and also went from a feeling of, “Oh I can’t do it” to: it’s possible…. Driven by the story, the amazing people I met along the way, the new landscape and the subject,“Water,” I actually never felt alone. One has to trust the process. The more I trusted the unknown and welcomed the “be in the moment” spontaneous move, the more I felt in the flow and totally guided by some invisible forces….
Now, I’d like to go back to the organization and definitely something I’ll pay more attention to on my next film: taking photos along the way. I have practically no photos because even when I traveled with a crew with little sleep and so many places to go with so little time somehow very few photos where taken. And the other thing that I learned is no matter what to label the tapes properly and write a few pages at night on the content of the day otherwise it’s a mess for the editor. Thank God I had a very patient editor!
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 20, 8:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema II, Park City]
