During the worst drought in decades and in the summer of the second year of the pandemic, my 30-year-old organ pipe cactus finally bloomed. Ontogeny exposes a startling display as the cactus develops from flower to fruit, "the pink-tipped sepals peeling back millimeter by millimeter until... it retreats and shrivels, a ball gown turned to rags."
-- Ligaya Mishan "on night-blooming flowers," NYTimes magazine, Oct. 11, 2021

"Ontogeny portrays the first-time blooming of a thirty-year old organ pipe cactus and the flower's gradual decay [to explore] themes that are central to all living beings: mortality, ephemerality, (Deceptively simple in structure), Ontogeny uses a flow of painstakingly composed stills and images in motion to convey the paradox of how death is part of life, and of the beauty inherent in the entire life and death cycle."
-- Steve Anker, "An Anatomy of Live Cinema," in Gravity Spells II: Bay Area New Music & Expanded Cinema Art, 2022

Music by John Wynne

Selected Screenings and Exhibitions:
Crossroads 2022, San Francisco Cinématheque.
Saigon Experimental Film Festival Satellite Program 2022