"Recalling John Ruskin's observation of J.M.W. Turner—'he paints in color but thinks in light and shade'—Hutton for the first time adds a wintry palette of opalescent blue-grays, greens, and ochres to his black-and-white tonalities, enlivened by splashes of eye-catching red and turquoise from the hulls of tankers, tugbarges, and cargo ships ambling their way up and down the Hudson. The film opens at a quickened pace with Billy Bitzer's 1903 time-lapse travelogue of maritime and manufacturing activity along the Hudson, then gives way to a meditation on the river's slow, sure rhythms, brooding fog and sea smoke, and counterpoints of wilderness and corrosive industry, transience and endurance." — MoMA
"The first section of the film is a reprint of a reel shot by Billy Bitzer in 1903 titled Down the Hudson for Biograph. It chronicles in single frame time lapse a section of the river between Newburgh, NY and Yonkers. The second section of the film was shot by filmmaker Peter Hutton (1998-99) and records fragments of several trips up and down the Hudson River between Bayonne, New Jersey and Albany, New York. The filmmaker was traveling on the tugboat 'Gotham' as it pushed (up river) and pulled (down river) the Noel Cutler, a barge filled with 35,000 barrels of unleaded gasoline." — Peter Hutton for the 38th NYFF