W is for Waves

The film W is for Waves takes sisters, author Virginia Woolf and visual artist Vanessa Bell, as a starting point to explore the artistic process and examine the relationship between the visual and the literary.

The film W is for Waves takes sisters, author Virginia Woolf and visual artist Vanessa Bell, as a starting point to explore the artistic process and examine the relationship between the visual and the literary. We see a choreography of two figures taking turns reading a book and moving with two large-scale paintings. The camera witnesses the actions and plays a subtle yet active role in altering the experience of space and visibility. The film was shot on 16 mm film at Bell’s country house, Charleston, in East Sussex, and at Kalervo Kallio’s Artist Home in Helsinki. The text is adapted from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves (1931), with some modifications.