THE TIDE KEEPER
20th annual Palm Springs International ShortFest Official Selection
Alyx Duncan is a filmmaker and choreographer. Her research investigates human perception in relation to place, culture and political context. Her first feature film, The Red House, won Best Debut Feature at ReelWorld, Toronto 2012, and followed up with The Tide Keeper 2014. Alyx is currently producing Lani Feltham’s short film Mouse, co-writing two new feature films The Moon Baby’s Daughter and Wildness, and a series of shorts commissioned by Touch Compass Dance Trust.
Synopsis:
An old man is collecting rubbish on a beach along the waters edge. He pauses to measure the incoming tide. The Tide Keeper is a dance and puppetry film that speaks of one man’s fears for the environment and future of humanity. Blending reality and fantasy. — director Alyx Duncan
Cast:
Lee Stuart
New Zealand director Alyx Duncan is a rare filmmaker — the consummate artist, “I always painted since I was a child.” Before she helmed the director’s chair — she spent 4 years in dance school and earned a masters degree in theater arts and choreographed for TV commercials, “I was always lopsided — one foot in dance and one foot in film.” But her creativite ambitions suddenly shifted when Alyx first picked up a camera, “it was like, I felt a rush of life — it’s like, I could capture the world.”
The Tide Keeper was the result of an experimental scene from her first feature film The Red House that went to the cutting room floor, “and then I thought, this is good, and I continued it 2 years latter.” Her experience in dance is truly a gift that aids her understanding of motion, especially in the film’s dream sequence, which blends puppetry animation with live action, “dance is about time, space and rhythm and the human body.” Although puppetry techniques used strings to create the fluid animation, it required months to remove digitally. Alyx found a postproduction house in New Zealand that offered their services for free, but felt obliged to honor their time and knowledge, “film is a medium that requires the time, intelligence and collaboration of many intelligent people — I prefer to have an exchange,” Alyx said. “Many different people have different skills — everyone brings their strength.”
Alyx wants The Tide Keeper to be open to interpretation, however, its scenes evoke a compelling underlying message. Just to give you an idea, in the climax, Stuart Lee is strangled and smothered by plastic bags in his sleep. “How can we reduce the amount of waste in the oceans?” Alyx asks. “It’s a major issue – my father is very passionate about the ocean.” Duncan worked with the presence and environmental concerns of her non-performer father, Lee Stuart, drawing inspiration from his experience as a fisherman for Green Peace. For The Tide Keeper, Alyx filmed on location in her hometown New Zealand, “the beach that I shot, I swam in it since I was a baby — what I love about film, is that you are seeing the beauty in front of you.” Overall, The Tide Keeper articulates complex ideas from a fresh and creative perspective — it marks Alyx Duncan as a gifted filmmaker to watch.
DIRECTOR: ALYX DUNCAN
WEB: THETIDEKEEPER.COM