You turned your back and held my hand

Gabriela Tollman's "You Turned Your Back and Held My Hand," a 6-minute short showing at the 2006 Sundance film fest and availble online at festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=486&category=F

Tollman, a native of South Africa and graduate of UCLA's School of Film won a Cinematography award at Cannes and an LA short film grant. You can see why she would win a cinematography award from watching this well-shot film.

This sensual exercise in recording love on film evokes a warmly engaging sense of touch. You can almost smell the sweet heady aroma of sex when these lovers thread their fingers through each other's hair, the closeups of eyes, of eyelashes, of golden smooth skin and melding bodies.

Many short films resort to collage and montage to collapse time. This one collapes emotion. It forgoes extensive plot to extend effect and does it well.

The imagery carries this short film right into your skin. You'll feel it viscerally rather than intellectually, and isn't that the essence of what short film should be?