imagineNATIVE 25 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! Everything inside your skull is going to twirl around when you feed it the outstanding short experimental music film Eyes Twirl Rounds, written and directed by Nanobah Becker. White Mountain Apache musician Laura Ortman wanders through the snow on peaks high above the world. She is joined by accomplished modern dancer Jock Soto as both make their way inside a strange house on the mountain. Through the light of the snow blinds, Ortman performs several songs as things get more ethereal. Ortman smiles in the darkness behind a glowing fuchsia icicle, then the landscape metamorphoses into glittering fractals with endless colors.
“…the landscape metamorphoses into glittering fractals with endless colors.”
This s**t is crazy and I absolutely love it. Eyes Twirl Rounds is part of a long-running series of collaborations between Becker, Ortman, and Soto that combines Ortman’s songs with captivating visuals. And I now want to watch every single last one of them. With all respect to the format, this type of film stretches far further than a simple music video. Instead of everything being about the songs, the film instead weaves the songs into a much larger sensory tapestry that perpetually astounds. The vistas of snow-covered mountains are even more breathtaking with the close-up of white studded leather high-heeled shoes stepping through the drifts. There is a gorgeous ghostly reflection caught from the haze of the light coming through the Venetian slats that would bring a tear to Adrian Lyne’s eye. Becker builds up the intensity of the images alongside the juxtapositions until she builds this gleaming spire of astonishment. Eyes Twirl Rounds is exactly what you were looking to stick in the pipe behind your forehead. Prepare for smoke to come out of your tear ducts.
Eyes Twirl Rounds screened at the 2025 imagineNATIVE 25 Film Festival.
"…weaves the songs into a much larger sensory tapestry that perpetually astounds."
