Watercolor2013

Water flows under an expressway and a railway. The path under these bridges never before seemed particularly attractive until this summer when I lingered and started to take pictures. I think the piece speaks for itself as it ended up going into so many different directions, emerging from concerns about space, the pictorial plane and a particularly interesting intersection between man made structures (both visually and aurally) and a changing, surprising nature. Watercolor (Fall Creek) exists between these necessary worlds, as time unfolds and remains difficult to comprehend.

What was, what has become, what's left, what's new, what is, what is made up, what is lighted, reflected, hidden, made transparent, or unknown, different rates of changes, matter of various kinds, all intent on affirming competing realities, spread themselves on the wide cinema screen both literally and figuratively. Where the how has as much to do with the is.

"Islands. O for God's sake they are connected underneath" – Muriel Rukeyser

Festival Selections, Awards & curated screenings:
• Onion City Film Festival, Sept 7 2013, "Wandering Pausing" Ferguson Theater, Columbia College, Chicago, Il.
• Views from The Avant Garde, New York Film Festival, Sat Oct 5th, 4:15, 2013, Precarious Light pgrm. Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Lincoln Center, NYC
• 2013 Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image, SPOOL mfg, Oct 18-19 Johnson City, NY
• Jury's Stellar Award (Grand Prize) for Experimental Work, 33rd Black Maria Film & Video Festival, screened Feb 7, 2014, Ingals Recitals Hall, New Jersey University, NJ. followed by tour with confirmed screenings at the • Rhode Island School of Design, RISD Auditorium, Providence, RI, Feb 24th • Berks Filmmakers at Albright College,Berks PA, Feb 25th • University of Colorado/ Naropa University, First Person Cinema Series, Performing Arts Center, Boulder, March 3rd • Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, April 2 • New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Cullman Center, Sat May 3, • National Gallery of Art, West Building Lecture Hall, Washington, DC, Pgrm 1, Saturday July 19th 2014.
• Festival International du Film sur l"Art (FIFA), FIFA Experimental, Pgrm. Perception, Cinematheque Québecoise, Salle Claude Jutras, Montréal, March 21, 6:30 pm, 2014
• Finger Lake Environmental Film Festival, FLEFF, Cinemapolis, Ithaca NY , April 6, 7 pm 2014, Upstate Filmmakers Showcase w/ filmmakers Chris Gallant, Vincent Grenier, Andy Watts, Tomonari Nishikawa, John Scott, and Wenhua Shi. See Blog
• First Prize in the Experimental Category. 2014 Athens International Film and Video Festival,The Athena Cinema, Pgrm: "Experiments with Water and Light", Athens Ohio, April 17.
• 20th Media City Film & Video Festival, Canadian Program, Windsor ON, Canada, July 8-12, 2014
• Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Théatre J.A. De Sève, Concordia University, FNC LAB-1 Impressions, Montréal, QC, Fri. Oct. 10, 3:00 pm and 17th, 7:00 pm, 2014 (with Q&A)
• Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, Alternative Visions series, Wed. Nov 19th, 2014
• Image Forum, “Landscape and a Floating Mind”, 7:00 pm, March 25, 2016, Tokyo, Japan



"In Watercolor Vincent Grenier reveals something we all know, but continually forget: the world is always making movies. Flows of reflection, contingencies of light, movement within frames surround us. But it takes a filmmaker of vision and an ability to linger to reminds us of this essential fact of our visual world. Color flows, light glints and patterns of amazement superimpose themselves in layers of viscous sight. A wonder to behold. This is I think (his) masterpiece and one of the most beautiful films I know.– Tom Gunning



Cine-List, a weekly guide to alternative cinema. Sept 6 -Sept 12. Crucial Viewing
Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival
Columbia College Chicago (1104 S. Wabash Ave., 5th Floor) & Music Box Theatre.

..."Wandering, Pausing (Saturday, 1pm at Columbia College) is probably the loveliest program of the festival. Lush, intense colors and imagery intermingle with rigorous compositions and challenging abstractions. Like so much of Vincent Grenier's work, WATERCOLOR (FALL CREEK) is so damned simple and straightforward that it's maddening how perfect and breathtaking the whole thing ends up being. WATERCOLOR is simply that - the color of water shot from under a bridge. The colors are never simply blue, never simply clear, always flowing (you know, like water) and always bifurcated by the shadow of the bridge. As the video progresses, the compositions start to mimic color field paintings then - with little time left - abruptly shift perspective, first visually, then temporally. Shit, it's good. ." – JBM



At the 25th annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, every picture tells a story by Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader, September 4 2013.

…"The other programs screening at the Ferguson Theater on Friday and Saturday—as well as the three screening at the Music Box on Sunday—spotlight more abstract traditions in experimental filmmaking. Of these, I'm most fond of "Wandering, Pausing," which screens Saturday at 1 PM, and "Illuminations," which screens Saturday at 5:45 PM. Many of the works in these programs evoke painting and poetry more than photography and prose, creating specific, ineffable moods. Vincent Grenier's Watercolor (Fall Creek) and former Chicagoan Jake Barningham's Pták básn? I a II (playing in "Wandering, Pausing") present dialogue-free images of landscapes, employing various cinematic devices (filters, dissolves, etc) to disrupt our sense of temporal flow. These short works encourage a sense of contemplation, only to throw it out of balance—they are far less comforting than they first seem..."



20th Media City Festival, 2014, Excerpt from "Canadian Program" (English Translation) by Emilie Vergé for LUMIERE, Online Journal of Cinema Critique, Spain. On "Watercolor" (voir original en Francais)