The Watering Room (2019)
33-minute narrative film
Directed & Edited by Katya Yakubov; Cinematography by Daniel Hess
Based on Russian fairy tales featuring the infamous Baba Yaga, The Watering Room stages a power-play between an old woman who lives in squalor, and a bureaucrat, there to question her about a piece of property she may own. This seemingly straightforward dynamic begins to break down with the continued re-telling of the same story—the specifics of an encounter the Surveyor had on his way to Yaga’s house. Mixing elements of horror, surrealism, and theater, the film questions why we take pleasure in the perverse, and how the boundaries of guilt can be actively re-written.