Boat chase round the lagoon of Venice and the Mose

After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax. With the help of scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond soon uncovers Drax's nefarious plans for humanity, all the while fending off an old nemesis, Jaws, and venturing to Venice, Rio, the Amazon...and even outer space.

Original 1979 short promotional production featurette for the James Bond movie Moonraker (1979) featuring interview and behind the scenes footage.

Boats in Venice

Blissful scenes of tourists arriving by boat and then sea bathing on a beach in the Venetian lagoon.

Many gondolas in Venice harbour with a fishing boat in the background

With real and constructed reflected views we glide down the Grand Canal in silence. We enter a tighter waterway slipping past buildings on each side and go under foot bridges. The single view splits into multiple views, as we reach open water it returns to a single view. The journey is repeated in reverse and speeded up.

Present-day Venice. Far from the swarms of tourists and cruise ships an alternate topography is made plain— one lived at the edges of the ancient city's lagoons, beneath the surface of its canals. A shipwright, a Venetian rowing champion, a diver, a fish merchant and a fisherman chronicle their daily lives as proximate and dependent on water, the founding element of the Venetian Republic a thousand years prior.

From the Lido to Venice via the Canal Grande: reflections on the lagoon, architecture, facades of churches and secular buildings, under the warm sunset of a winter afternoon. Cinema as accelerated painting. By train until the exploration of the tiny daily life, under an incandescent light. The journey stops between the trees of Bois d'Arcy.