Kiss the Water

This doc about a Scotswoman who made flies for salmon fishermen sounds like it should be tucked away on some special-interest cable TV channel. Yet filmmaker Eric Steel (who made the powerful suicide study ‘The Bridge’) turns unlikely subject matter into a captivating journey through a landscape of mystery and imagination. It’s mysterious, because no one, least of all the woman herself – Megan Boyd, who died in 2001 – knew why salmon were lured by her exquisitely crafted combinations of twine, hook and feather, treasured by highland ghillies, angling aristos and even a certain royal. Indeed, threaded around interviews and lovingly framed footage of the Brora environs in the Highlands where Boyd spent her entire life, Em Cooper’s lustrous handpainted animation hints at a rich inner life transcending her primitive surroundings in a tumbledown cottage. It ultimately conjures an imaginative communion with the world beneath the water. Definitely not your standard doc, this is something special. Haunting and meditative, its intriguing collage of images and ideas offers evocative encouragement to enter another life, another time, another place.