breakSurface (2001)

When sculptor John Greer and filmmaker Stewart Applegath began shooting, they had no destination, only a desire to journey together in a row boat with camera in hand. Over six years, they rowed a fair distance. breakSurface documents these travels, and the extent to which Greer’s world is leavened with debilitating anxiety. Greer’s powerful sculpture is visually simple, conceptually complex, but silent; he identifies with Jonathan Swift’s "man of objects" who lays out things, not words, to be understood. Applegath, however, doesn’t make this film to replace words, but by embracing them.