IN THE WAVES
In Jacquelyn Mills’ impressionistic documentary, her 80-year-old grandmother Joan Alma Mills struggles to come to terms with the death of her younger sister and searches for answers to life’s big questions in the natural beauty that surrounds her coastal village home. Elliptical scenes of Joan’s daily life, and glimpses of the filmmaker’s more camera-shy grandfather, are interspersed with spiritual interactions with nature. A visit from a young niece invites a juxtaposition of the beginnings and endings of life, and evokes ideas about the nature of existence.

A small and intimate film, In the Waves nevertheless feels as though it reaches out into infinity. Mills moves effortlessly between observational documentary, full of charmingly candid scenes, and non-narrative poetry that captures moments of grace such as reflected light dancing on a wall. With a delicate attention to detail, spoken musings on mortality and meaning are intricately interwoven with elegiac imagery. This is a soulful rumination on the passage of time — its ebbs, flows and eternal mysteries.

“A ‘labor of love’, this poetic documentary deftly balances the quotidian with the ethereal. Within it, there is no evidentiary editing or arguments to make; Mills genuinely uses the film to poetically convey the life of an older woman nearing her final days. Without motive, the film carries weight as an abstract expression of sound, image, and spirit.” – Kamran Ahmed, Letterboxd

Screening w/ the short film, LA PESCA, by Pablo Álvarez-Mesa
“On Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it’s a workday like any other for the men of a fishing family. The filmmakers capture the smallest details of their work, with all its repetitive but always exact motions. Games of dominoes, conversations, cooking and even spontaneous song fill the long waits that punctuate the fishermen’s days. La pesca reveals the poetry that fills the men’s everyday lives, observing them closely on land before following them on an underwater sensory immersion, where their bodies and nets dance an enthralling ballet. In this sublime short, knowledge and the passage of time are as one – hour after hour, day after day, generation after generation.” – Montreal International Documentary Festival