Film Short: The City Limits


Photo by Dominic Boudreault

Timelapse photography is one of those mediums which is easy to imitate but difficult to perfect. As it increasingly becomes a staple of documentary filmmaking, charting the progress of flowering plants or sublime skies, it’s easy to forget that urban environments can produce captivating images as much as their natural counterparts.

Canadian “motion photographer” Dominic Boudreault, however, has not forgotten. Indeed, his short film ‘The City Limits’ manages not only to reflect the wonder of the man-made cityscapes which have so captivated countless other cameras, but also offers the intriguing comparison that urban and pastoral are at once more similar, and more different, than we had believed. Both are constantly evolving, ever-changing and restlessly moving, yet their inherent conflicts – those of tarmac against grass, bark against glass – are simultaneously unavoidable.

Boudreault’s film, which compiles timelapse images from a handful of major North American cities including Toronto and New York, was, in his own words, “a year in the making”. Paired savvily with music by film composer Hans Zimmer, it’s a film with a singular goal.

Mesmerising, beautiful, simple, intriguing, poignant. ‘The City Limits’ is all of these things and more.

Timelapse – The City Limits from Dominic on Vimeo.

Luke Grundy is a fervent assimilator of media living amid the bright lights of London, England. If he’s not watching films or listening to music, he’s probably asleep, eating or dead. An aspiring writer, journalist and musician, he is the creator of movie/music blog Odessa & Tucson and lives for epistemology.




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