Christo: Walking on Water
Bulgarian filmmaker Andrey Paounov follows internationally renowned artist Christo on his quest to realize the mammoth and logistically complex installation, The Floating Piers, on Italy’s Lake Iseo.
WALKING ON WATER follows internationally renowned environmental artist – and Paounov’s fellow countryman – Christo on his quest to realize The Floating Piers, originally conceived in 1970 by Christo and his late wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude. In 2016, seven years after Jeanne-Claude’s death, this stunning, site-specific masterpiece – which allows visitors to walk across a great stretch of water, buoyed by polyethylene cubes draped in luminous yellow fabric – was finally cleared to be mounted on Italy’s Lake Iseo, which lies at the foot of the Alps. But securing a location proved to be only the first step in a tumultuous process of creative problem solving and prickly negotiations.
Walking on Water gives us a rare look into the business of large-scale art production – and the sort of temperament required to bestow unto the world something that feels close to a miracle.