this is a story.

2005 4mins prod Picture Plant, p/d/sc/narr William D. MacGillivray, ph Kent Nason, ed Christopher Cooper; with Joseph Rutten, Morgan Salter (voice).

Nova Scotia-based director William D. MacGillivray's (Life Classes, Understanding Bliss, et al) latest work is a short film as startling in its simplicity as it is vertiginous in its thematic possibilities. As the camera passes slowly over a naked male body (Rutten) lying perfectly still upon a deep black background, MacGillivray's voiceover speaks eloquently about the body, time, memory, identity and the imperative of narrative. "We are all longing for light in the darkness," he intones, and so, he continues, we sing songs, tell tales and move through vast solitudes with stories toward one another and then apart again. Recalling his previous short Linda Joy (1985), a film that explores with breath-taking economy matters of life and death, this is a story, composed entirely of a single graceful shot, evokes the relationship--in life and in art--between the ephemeral and the permanent. It also underscores the cinema's paradox of showing life as it records life's inevitable movement to death. With its clear Canadian echoes of Samuel Beckett and Robert Bresson, MacGillivray's work is a modernist marvel in miniature that speaks of itself as it speaks to us. It's the drama of thought made manifest in sounds and images.