An experimental documentary with a distinctly lived in feeling, Terra Long’s Feet in Water, Head on Fire uses a peculiar visual sensibility to entrance, educate, and provoke thought.
For Feet in Water, Head on Fire, Long travels to several towns in California’s Coachella Valley, located not too far away from the San Andreas Fault and the Salton Sea ecological disaster sight that was once a major tourist attraction. It’s an unusual place; a desert oasis where certain vegetation that can’t be found in many other places tends to thrive. Here, dates are big business (alongside grapes, onions, and citrus), with communities leaning heavily into near mythical connections with the middle eastern delicacies. It’s an area rich in indigenous history, but today is more widely known as a place where an exploited Latinex population toils endlessly while wealthy, privileged folks indulge in country club culture.
That push and pull between hard work and leisure comes through loud and clear, with Long’s atypical approach to documentary nicely drawing connections between the people and the land they share. Shot in 16mm with bits of image manipulation here and there, the landscapes and sights are sometimes alien in appearance, but always fascinating. The images also link up nicely to interviews Long conducts with a wide variety of locals from shop keepers and their daughters, retirees trying to get the bugs out of their pool, golfers, and labourers.
What emerges is akin to a pleasingly avant-garde travelogue that looks at the positives and negatives of this uniquely American melting pot in an artful, but no less impactful manner. Feet in Water, Head on Fire (which refers not only to a sense of the region, but also the ideal growing conditions for the area’s revered date trees) is an epic poem, full of pride and pain. Long’s film feels fully rooted and connected to this specific patch of Earth, one that’s way overdue for “the big one” so many seismologists have predicted. Feet in Water, Head on Fire asks the question, if so much changes over time, what survives in the wake of that change?
Tuesday, May 2, 2023 – 8:00 pm – TIFF Bell Lightbox 4
Feet in Water, Head on Fire will be available to stream across Canada via Hot Docs from May 5th to 9th.
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