Prelude Op. 28 No. 2

We see the timeless figure of a reading woman by the pool side. The camera pans slowly past smooth white walls, warm wooden doors, onto the edge of the paved area, where the woman now sits, yet again. We are back in the first frame of the film. The man standing close by turns to face her, and frames the woman into an imaginary image, seated there, on the boundary between the built environment and the woods. She appears merely a visitor now, a fleeting presence by the pool side, whereas the reading figure radiated a calm sense of belonging.

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.