In “The Reflecting Pool” (1979), Bill Viola resorts to the use of masks in order to, mimicking the effect “naturally” produced by the fountain in the aforementioned movie, combine different temporalities within the same frame. A character jumps into the water, but its movement is frozen in a snapshot that interrupts only its own action, preserving the movement of everything else around it. The coexistence, within the same frame, of the continuousness of movement (which we associate with life) with the static nature of photography (which fatefully resembles death) makes this interrupted leap leave us suspended between past, present, and future. Diogo Costa Amarante (adapted)