A Body Called Life

At first glance, James appears to be a solitary young man. But if you zoom in – pun intended – you’ll see that he’s not actually alone. As he spends most of his days looking through his microscope at the tiny creatures, invisible to the naked eye, that surround us at all times. Treating these microscopic organisms like pets, he has developed an emotional connection with them, giving him a different outlook on life. Co-written by James (himself) Weiss and director Spencer MacDonald, A Body Called Life offers a tender look at the metaphysical question of what is our place on Earth.

“I was charmed by the creatures he was able to film through his microscope and the tender lens through which he narrated their lives”

While working on another project, MacDonald discovered James’ instagram account, where he films and narrates the lives of all the tiny animals he spends his nights observing. “I was charmed by the creatures he was able to film through his microscope and the tender lens through which he narrated their lives”, he confessed. Adding that he “was particularly intrigued by how he would also narrate his own life in the third person and the way he was sharing his journey with therapy”.

Inspired directly from the verbatim Instagram posts of James’ account, MacDonald opts for a hybrid approach blending fiction and documentary. From the opening shot, and the use of Lee Hazlewood’s Your Sweet Love, MacDonald invites us into James’ universe. Placing the audience in his shoes, he grants us insight into his experience of life, his passion and inner demons, almost in a therapeutic and healing way. The sound is perfectly crafted to immerse us in James’ perception of the world. How comfortable and safe he feels behind his microscope – excitedly introducing us to the rotifers, water bears, paramecia, ciliates he’s collected over time – while starkly contrasting with how triggering the outside world can be for his C-PTSD.

MacDonald admits he was “interested in experimenting with the space between documentary and fiction”, while also exploring “how far the genres can be pushed while still connecting people to a concrete story.”

Narratively, MacDonald structures his screenplay to echo the way James describes his findings when looking through his microscope, and applying that same observational lens to James’ own life. His voice enhances the immersive layer of the film, while also giving it a very luminous and emotionally engaging quality. DP Fabian Kimoto’s images ensure a continuity between his lens and James’ microscope, ensuring the overall tone of the film stays true to James’ voice. Cleverly, the film explores our place in the universe, from the infinitely big to the infinitely small – leaving us, as humans, somewhere in the middle. 

Ahead of its online debut, A Body Called Life made its way around the festival circuit in 2024 with notable stops at Raindance – where it won the Academy Award Qualifying Best Documentary Award – deadCenter and the Palm Springs ShortFest. MacDonald is currently developing his next project, a fiction feature film titled Passengers which he describes as being about “a western woman, suffering from general ennui, [who] stumbles upon interesting new scientific research from a local university: laboratory induced ‘out-of-body experiences’”