Barge Dirge

There is a stroboscopic opening. A barge, as you'd expect, a mechanical leviathan. It is a great rectangular presence on a white background, snow or the sky. It flashes, hand-processed film, views from here, views from there - the barge is massive, some form of transport - we see ramps, a truck upon it briefly, a cavernous hangar implied by the wide metal ribs, the suspended curtains - this is a volume, a great volume, and over the top is Piotr Grella-Mozjeko's music.

It's apparently Winnipeg, a great space implied - unseen. Instead details - tires, capstans, gasping ventilators, fish-like pipe-mouths, those ramps, the ground, this behemoth of steel. Lindsay McIntyre shows us blank skies, smooth structures, the bow, the stern, and back and forth. It is perhaps your reviewer's predilictions that mean there is more curiosity about the barge than the film - in this age of Ice Road Truckers the gargantuan entity is more fascinating than its lament. The music is striking, the aesthetic impact more dependent on sound than vision - we're left wanting to see more, but have heard enough.