The Last Split Second

7 minutes, Colour
16mm, 1998, optical sound
Judith Doyle

Grand Chameleon Award, Best Documentary, Brooklyn International Film Festival 1999.

"The Last Split Second" is a provocative portrait of physical trauma based on Toronto artist Andy Patton's eloquent accounts of surviving a broken back and the requisite medical treatments. The film is a seamless weave of text, voice-over, computer animation and optical printing. "The Last Split Second" features stunning imagery, perfectly suited to this tale of sensory perception, with medical scans blending into three-dimensional skeletons blending into car wrecks. The effect is at once thought-provoking and visceral, a breathtaking document of a terrible event"
-Barbara Goslawski, TAKE ONE Magazine

Adapted from an account by Toronto artist Andy Patton, a car crash is replayed as a victim's narration shifts from disbelief to pain. Colourization and motion-controlled footage suggest the feeling of tunnel vision induced by shock. Optical printing, film chemistry, digital effects and computer animation are layered to evoke the perceptions and technological mediations of trauma.