AWARDS

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2016

72 minutes  

I made this film as a cinematic equivalent to the first-person narration by making each frame an image drawn by my main character, a young artist commissioned to travel to San Juan Island for three days to paint the double portrait of an art collector couple who could make his career. In order to paint them he has to see them clearly, but his own blind spots and history of trauma keep him from seeing anything clearly, leading him into danger. The film could be said to be about trauma as a filter for perception; each character in the film is carrying a trauma and a wound— either psychic or physical. These wounds go back to the secrets of a previous generation: an ex-Nazi hiding in Brazil, a boy who witnessed his parents die in an accident, a girl who saw her sister disfigured, a man dying of a terminal illness. My main character attempts to heal his wounds with the power of art, a valiant effort which is both heroic and tragic in this case. 

My single collaborator on this film, the late composer Gilbert Gundersen, wrote a marvelous score which perfectly captures the floating, dreamy feeling of water and the hallucinogenic quality of trauma.  

The Film was an official Selection at Seattle's Northwest Screenings Festival, the Independent Filmmakers Showcase, Los Angeles, and the Northwest Film Festival, Portland.