The cook retreats to a small storage closet where there is approximately 60 minutes of air remaining.  Fifty–eight miles from shore in the confines of his closet/incubator he cycles through the life-death continuum experiencing indisputable hallucinations of his baby girl’s birth, growth and his own death, burial and rebirth.  He visualizes his daughter’s efforts up through age five, as the air runs out he becomes a mid-wife to the “home-movies” he will never see.  This is a vision which only film can allow.  What began as documentary ends as fiction.  What began as fiction becomes a study of nature. 

Stills:

She Unfolds by Day explores the afternoon in which a frustrated middle-aged son tries to manage his misanthropic 80-year-old mother.  Along with his dog, they cope with signs of Alzheimer’s, while her wandering draws her to nearby woods where the forms and rhythms of the eco-systems shape their story.  A series of disjointed loops melds fiction, documentary and nature film elements into a strange mixture of heightened reality and unconscious imagery.  She Unfolds by Day taps into the potential for filmmaking to reintroduce life forms as inseparable from our story.  I wove the visuals of tiny creatures from my backyard, animated motions of my terrier and the sublime expressions of wolf life with the antics of my forgetful 80-year- old mother.  What began as documentary ends as fiction.  What began as fiction becomes a study of nature.

 The Atlas Moth completes the seven year story Dan Cleveland and Dark Horse  first CD Guts Before Glory“.