Dorothy's Adobe's

Using high speed cinematography, filmmaker Brandy Browner offers a viewers a warm, poetic, humorous (and fast!) treat: the construction, from top to bottom, of an adobe house. At the heart of the film is the Hays family: Tim, Laura, and young, wheelbarrowin' Gabriel. Together with the other workers, we see wonderful shots of this unique family (the scene with Gabriel bringing in exactly six shovelfuls of sand in his toy wheelbarrow automatically curls the corners of the mouth upwards). In another scene, we see Tim tossing up shovels full of mud to a fellow worker: the toss is invariably accurate, so that the receiver need only catch and turn, depositing the mud precisely over the specific brick, and then return the shovel. The accumulation of these images, culminating in the hollowing out of a section of wall to accommodate the statue of a saint, is pure cinematic poetry. Highly recommended for larger public and school libraries. (Available from: One West Media, P.O. Box 5766, Sante Fe, NM 87501).