From the Feb 26, 2004 issue of The Star
Documenting A State's Past and Future
Images of St. Joseph Bay by Clyde Butcher.
by Tim Croft
It was part trip-tic, part postcard.
It was also a warning bell, sounding from a film of stunning greens, blues and gold, a harkening sound to all those who love what Florida was, is and can be, even as it grapples with rapid development and encroaching sprawl.
With his 60-minute essay in Super 16 film, cinematographer Elam Stoltzfus of Blountstown, accomplished something unique: he forced the viewer to look a bit closer, cherish a little more, the stunning beauty that lures so many to the Sunshine State.
Stoltzfus's film "Living Waters: The Aquatic Preserves of Florida" premiered last Friday night before an overflow crowd of invited guests in the main auditorium of the Gray Building in Tallahassee.
The film, which began regular public showings later in the night, opened as part of the state capital's annual "Seven Days of Opening Nights" celebration of the arts.
It will continue to run at the Mary Brogan Museum into April when local PBS stations in the state will begin airing the celebration of Florida's natural bounty - water.
It is a gorgeous film, and a quiet one, Sammy Tedder's strikingly realized musical score staying mostly out of the way, providing the chorus for the main voice of the lens - nature, in the rare and breathtaking form that life in Florida provides.
Each of 12 chapters tell the unique tales of a dozen of Florida's 41 aquatic preserves.
Starting, naturally, of course, at St. Joseph Bay and tracing a path down around the Keys and back to Jacksonville, Stoltzfus's camera captures wild Florida with a vocabulary that renders dictionaries lacking.
Early on we see Tom Parker scalloping and Danny Raffield pulling nets in St. Joseph Bay, and throughout we are introduced to those whose lives have become intertwined with the water around them.
Introduced by famed photographer Clyde Butcher, whose black-and-white images punctuate each chapter, the film is as absorbing as a sandy beach, as shimmering as a spring-fed stream.
Stoltzfus's palette is as distinctive, the message, articulated by Butcher, but better stated by the camera, profound - that it is our charge to treasure, to preserve, these pulsing waters, our legacy which will in large measure be gauged by the ability of our children, our children's children, to enjoy these bounties as we do today.
It is a message that sneaks up on the viewer, slipping beneath the skin as blazing images travel from eye to brain, flowing through and finding purchase in the mind as blood through veins.
The viewer is challenged by the very scenes of the wild that are so seductive on screen, engaged while entranced, enticed into a conspiracy.
Of responsibility, stewardship, which only blossoms like a seed in soil as scenes of indescribable delicacy and elegance are replayed again and again in the recesses of the gray matter.
It is a film of sublime imagery, and powerful majesty.
Its message, the underlying theme, could hardly be more timely.
And in this Oscar season, is there a clearer definition of award-winning film-making?
