Power Of Water
Power of Water is a live film-performance work merging cinema and stage, created for the 65th Eurovision Song Contest and broadcast to over 180 million viewers. Shot at the mythic scale of the Delta Works, it follows two women moving through flood and stillness. A water spectacle that draws on the ancient bond between the Dutch and the sea.
“We saw The Delta Works at an excellent performance by Davina Michelle. All evening, empowerment radiated across the stage.”
what water remembers
Power of Water was created as the live interval act for the 65th Eurovision Song Contest, broadcast worldwide. Starring singer Davina Michelle and actress Thekla Reuten, the work was shot on location at the Delta Works in Zeeland; the vast flood-barrier system that has held the North Sea at bay for more than half a century, nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
But the Delta Works here are not a backdrop. They are a presence. Steel gates wide enough to swallow a cathedral. Water held in suspension by engineering alone. The film moves through this landscape as through a living body, finding the places where the human-made and the elemental press against each other, where the seam between control and chaos is thinner than it appears…
Davina moves through flood and stillness, surface and depth. Her body carries the memory of what water does to us, and what we have done to hold it back. On stage and on screen simultaneously, the two forms breathe together: the recorded and the present, the mythic and the immediate.
we are water
Long before there were dikes, there was water. It shaped this land, and the people who stayed learned to live inside a constant negotiation. Not above the water, not apart from it, but alongside it. That negotiation never ended. It only changed form.
Water does not forget. It finds every crack, returns to every low place, moves around every obstacle in time. To be resilient is not to be hard. It is to move like water moves; to absorb pressure without breaking, to find the way through…
Power of Water is a celebration of that quality: not as Dutch engineering, but as something older and more universal. We are made mostly of water. We began in it. Every culture on earth has a story about the flood, because water is not only a threat. It is the element we come from, and the one we return to. The film holds both of those truths at once.
“Davina Michelle’s act was even more impressive on screen than at the venue. And all this with a typically Dutch theme of the battle against water.”
“Davina Michelle en Thekla Reuten in #Eurovision2021 .... a beautiful ode to Holland Waterland!”
credits
| Performance | |
| Performance | Davina Michelle, Thekla Reuten |
| Direction | |
| Director | Ruben Van Leer |
| 1st Assistant Director | Libbe van Dijk |
| Camera | |
| Director of Photography | Ezra Reverda |
| Camera Water | Bas Andries |
| 2nd Unit | Juliette Stevens |
| 1st ACs | Arjen Ottema, Tom Duiker |
| Drone Operators | Tom van Oijen, Kim Hoogervorst |
| Grip | Bjorn Schumacher |
| Gaffer | Nicholas Burrough |
| Best Boy | Sven Deen |
| VTR | Joel Sperling |
| VFX | |
| VFX Supervisor | Marijn Eken |
| VFX Team | Matthijs Joor, David Goubitz, Ewoud Heidanus, Remko Kram |
| Post-Production | |
| Editing | Chee-Han Wong |
| Grading | Matt Hare |
| Flame Fix | Bas Moonen |
| Grade Fix | Arjan Eekels @ Ambassadors |
| Sound | |
| Sound Design | Eric van Tijn |
| Art & Styling | |
| Styling | Diek Pothoven, Marja Bennenbroek |
| Hair & Make-up | Ellen Romeijn, Mila de Jong, Arnaud Schoenmaker |
| Storyboard | Peter Klijn |
| Production | |
| Production Company | New Amsterdam Film Company |
| Producers | Jelani Isaacs, Laura Hannewijk |
| Line Producer | Jella van Eck |
| Production Assistants |
Bas Klinkenberg, Emma Gisondi, Sabrine Erry, Jair Bromet, Lara Rippinger |
| Special Crew | |
| Safety Diver | Sjouke Brunia |
| Diving Assist | Marjolein Maas |
| Motor & Stand-in | Damian van Leeuwen, Sharon Ravestein |
| Technical Support | |
| Equipment | Maloney, Camera Rentals, Kiwi Aerial Shots, Camalot, Cinegrip |
| Delta Works | Ilze Rukven, Niels Kuiken, Eric van der Weegen @ Rijkswaterstaat |
| Pool Location | Frank Spiering, Location WCTC IJmond |
| Music | |
| Music | Eric van Tijn, Sebastiaan Brouwer, Davina Michelle |
| Additional | |
| Legal | Benjamin Van Werven @ Walden Grene |
| Team Eurovision | Gerben Bakker, Marc Pos, Aviva Kasteleyn, Marloes van Rijn |
filmmaker & media-artist
