Before It Blows

As we watch through a tourist’s video camera for the Old Faithful geyser to erupt, visitors stand just outside the frame and vent their own desires and frustrations on one another. The anxious videographer and his helpful wife; the dazzled mother with her cynical teenaged son; the pontifical father and his overmodulated daughter; and the couple who have just decided to separate – as the geyser finally erupts, each of them explodes in their own way. “One of Canada’s most imaginative experimental filmmakers (her other acclaimed films include Sifted Evidence, Low Visibility, Ley Lines) returns with a concise, amusing and telling examination of how we look and how we think. As the camera remains fixed in its gaze at the impending gush of the Old Faithful geyser, voices off-screen express impatience, expectation, uncertainty and awe at the power of nature unleased before them. It is a clever conceit, revealing just how restless North Americans are: we can’t wait for anything! A deceptively simple short film, Before It Blows suggest vast thematic outlines which explore human Gruben’s work, the very foundations of our tenuous knowledge of the world and of ourselves.” – Tom McSorley, Take One (Winter 1998)