By Lu Schilling

In celebration of Earth Day, Movies That Matters will screen the award winning documentary Rivers and Tides about the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, who creates intricate and ephemeral sculptures from natural materials. The film received a number of awards, including the ‘Best Documentary’ awards of the San Diego Film Critics Society and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Showtime is 4:30 pm on Tuesday, April 17 at the UU Fellowship.

In this deeply moving film, shot in four countries and across four seasons, Goldsworthy creates works of art with ice, driftwood, leaves, stone, dirt and snow in open fields, beaches, rivers, creeks and forests. With each new creation, he carefully studies the energetic flow and transitory nature of his work. In his work “you see something you never saw before; that was always there but you were blind to”.

You needn’t be an art aficionado to find yourself absorbed in the film. One special characteristic of Goldsworthy’s work is that each piece interacts with nature, both statically like a photo or painting, and temporally. There is also something elemental about the way he brings time into our consciousness. The work is born and dies, and flows back into its environment. Somehow, we become not simply an observer of this cycle. In a way not usually accomplished by movies, our awareness and understanding of life, time and the eternal are touched.

When you see Karon Winzenz, thank her for bringing this film to our attention. Happy Earth Day.