Heart of a Dog

Heart of a Dog is a personal essay film that explores themes of love death and language. The director’s voice is a constant presence as stories of her dog Lolabelle, her mother, childhood fantasies, political and philosophical theories unfurl in a seamless song like stream.

The visual language spans animation, eight millimeter films from the artist’s childhood, layered imagery and high speed text animation. The director’s signature music runs throughout the film in works for solo violin, quartets, songs, and ambient electronics.

The center of Heart of a Dog is a visual and poetic meditation on the bardo. As described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the bardo is the forty nine day period after death in which identity is shredded and the consciousness prepares to enter another life form.

Personal stories are intercut with stories about the information culture that feature the NSA, Iron Mountain, the creation of false documents and personal accounts and theories that trace the process and history of data collection.

“A Story About A Story” envisions her ordeal in the hospital when she broke her back as a child and how the story became her way to understand the relationship of real events, authority, and faulty memory on the creation of stories. Theories on sleep, imagination and disorientation are framed as questions about time and identity. Is it a pilgrimage? Which way do we go?