About the Film
The Wadden Sea is one of the last remaining large-scale, intertidal ecosystems extending along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, where natural processes continue to function largely undisturbed in a diverse ecosystem which serves as an annual breeding ground for over twelve million birds. With his observational style and cinematic eye for detail, director Pieter-Rim de Kroon presents the Wadden region as one massive, living breathing organism whose rhythms move in synchrony with endless cycle of the four seasons.
Silence of the Tides is a film that breathes, making awareness of oxygen almost tangible, a film about contrasts — between the peace and quiet of the salt marshes and the loud and massive assault of thousands of gray geese, the roar of a powerful thunderstorm.
Silence of the Tides makes you listen, attunes you to the sounds of nature. Sometimes, one image is rendered with thirty different sounds, all recorded separately and mixed with sound engineer Victor Dekkers’ brilliant expertise and acute sensitivity. We hear soft rippling water, the buzzing of mosquitoes moving almost invisibly over the image, and the almost erotic spitting sound of clams. Layered above the sounds of Nature is the noise created by human devices – the railway carriage, the clanking machine spouting sand, the enormous fishing boat emptying the sea, the jet fighters shooting through the air, the army machine gun firing blanks across the water. There are the human sounds themselves — the laughter, the screaming, the singing, the reading. And then there is the sound of the squeaky organ, seeming almost to direct the flux of the tides.
In this technical masterpiece, director Pieter-Rim de Kroon brings us the magic of the cinematic experience using natural light, a distinguished combination of lens angles, camera choreography, editing and original use of soundtrack. Silence of the Tides increases our appreciation of nature, while questioning our ambivalent relationship with it.
Nicole Guillemet
