KISS THE WATER - AND MARCH TO THE BEAT OF YOUR OWN DRUM...

I don’t quıte know how to say this… I just want to come straight out and start off by saying that never in my wildest dreams could I actually have been able to picture myself advising you guys to watch what seems to be for all intents and purposes, a documentary on fly fishing. No, no don’t close the page just yet; I assure you there is more to it than that. Kiss the Water, is a little number that made quite a stir in film festivals this year; be it Tribeca, Hot Springs or Edinburgh… Calling it a merely a documentary on fly fishing would be an immense insult to the extraordinary woman whose story it tells… And in fact, to the film itself – after all it does rise to the challenge of its extraordinary subject matter and tells its story in rather an extraordinary way…

The story is that of Megan Boyd. You probably wouldn’t have heard of her. But she is, in fact, one of the greatest creators of fishing flies to have lived. Miss Boyd was both eccentric and a recluse. But that does not mean she was shut off from the world. Her works of art – for how else can I describe them – have graced the collections of the rich and famous, of royalty and of collectors all over the world…

And I am pretty sure that this is going to be the first of many points in this little gem that will take you by surprise. Her fishing flies were so beautiful that there is an open division of opinion as to whether they were ever intended to be used at all… One expert on the matter even confidently states that they weren’t intended for use – he is, however, contradicted by Miss Boyd’s apprentice which to my mind says the last word on the matter. I must confess, I have had very little to do with fly fishing in my time. I had no idea what to expect when we had the first extreme close-up of a fly. I was mesmerized in an instant, hooked as it were, by one of the many salmons her flies caught… The colours, the ingenuity, the creativity…You should watch the documentary, if for no other reason, so that your impression of fishing flies – whatever they may be – can be corrected once and for all.

But that is by far and away not the only thing that recommends the film. Since it has taken on a rather extraordinary life and person, Kiss the Water goes slightly off the beaten track as far as its cinematography goes. True, there are the requisite talking heads – people who knew her, who worked with her, who studied her work… These are intercut with simply stunning visuals from the Scottish countryside (it really got the travel bug in me going) and with stunning and almost abstract animations, not to reconstruct anything in particular but, to convey the emotions created by fishing, the flies, the nature, Miss Boyd herself and her creative process. For a split second I was concerned that the whole animation thing was going to lapse slightly into the overly artistic and pretentious, but no.  The animation sequences capture a sense of beauty and creativity that quite unexpectedly appear in the midst of the more conventional segments of the documentary – much like the moment Miss Boyd’s flies hit the water and brought a tiny speck of something different into the river…

Another point I rather liked about the documentary is the fact that Miss Boyd’s physical form is strangely absent from her life story… It may seem odd that we do not actually see pictures (moving or otherwise) of her right until the very end. But look at it this way, The documentary does such a good job of conveying everything about Miss Boyd, her character and her work that a mere photograph could not convey –we don’t actually need the obligatory grainy videos of her. We have learnt all that is important. Not that the grainy videos are out of place or ill-used when they do come, mind you…

Quite apart from anything else, this documentary is a wonderful opportunity to marvel at how many different guises artistic talent and creativity can come in… And what a wonderful thing it is to have the courage to walk to the beat of one’s own drum – and that beat alone.  Because you know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance, living out most of one’s life in a tiny remote cottage with neither electricity nor running water making a living by hand-making fishing flies but you know… Aren’t you glad she did?

For viewers in the UK The Art of Fly Fishing : Kiss the Water is currently available on BBC Iplayer… I say go check it out… Like, now…