Surfacing on the Thames

“The loveliest Rimmer film (and the cleverest Rimmer title) shows a river boat slowly steaming past the Houses of Parliament – so slowly that it seems not to be moving, and surrounded by such luminous mistiness that one critic is supposed to have thought he was looking at a Turner painting rather than at film footage. Gradually the surface of the film begins to wrinkle slightly, to spot, to show minor blemishes – in a sense to assert itself above and before the rich density it contains. The gesture is tentative and discreet, but it is also unsettling and liberating in ways that seem central to the gentle invocations of dissolution that are a basic feature of David Rimmer’s world.” – Roger Greenspun, New York Times “Temporally, each frame of the original shot is rendered as a brief pause between a continuing progression of dissolves… it is a chronology of events, normally occurring in real time, but seen in this film from an intensely magnified perspective.” – Al Razutis, Vancouver Art Gallery “The ultimate metaphysical movie…one of the really great constructivist films since Wavelength.” – Gene Youngblood, Arts Canada