Change and Constancy

One of my favorite movies is Smoke. It’s a simple and moving story about a tobacco shop and the people around it in Brooklyn. One of the best scenes in the movie involves the shop owner showing a stack of photo albums to one of his regular customers. There are thousands of photos all taken at exactly the same time in the same place, early in the morning in front of the tobacco shop. As the photos flash before the movie camera, you see a place change and stay the same.

Now, there’s a new short movie on YouTube that makes the same kind of impact:

The images of Noah Kalina go by so quickly by, it’s mostly his hair that seems to change. But you can also see how he ages slightly, and how his environment changes over time. You can see an incredible and even inspiring sameness over the course of six years, and you can see hints of bad days and good days.