Birth, death, beauty – in black and white

Ever had one of those moments where you’re reborn along a wondrous sparkling ice canal towards a deeper understanding of life’s miracle? Or maybe you’re transitioning to the spiritual realm, guided towards a blissful white light?

No? Well luckily, Montreal-based filmmaker Christopher Dormoy has visualised what such occasions might look like in this hypnotic short, Black Ice.

The Senior Art Director at Ubisoft has used his lockdown time wisely by playing with some ice, flowers and ink and time-lapse macro photography to see what kind of universes he could create.

At just under four minutes, the video is the result of about four hours of real-time footage, captured over the course of two months, using 19 flowers and experimenting by injecting warm ink into ice. 

The sense of life ebbing and flowing is heightened by the tremor of violin strings, played and plucked, in the gorgeous track Spring, by Cathedral.