In film, the story is everything, and this adage is no better defined than with Brian Savelson’s Counting Water. Chosen as one of the Atlanta Film Festival Grand Jury shorts winners, the seven-minute stop-motion animation, made with rudimentary materials such as felt, toothpicks and other inexpensive art supplies, tells a love story so graceful and sad that it would be touching in any format.

The voice-over narration lays out the life of Juilet and her lover. A demanding fool, he requires that she tell him exactly how much she loves him, and she replies that she loves him as many droplets as there are in the ocean. But, this is not enough for him, and so she travels out to sea and begins counting. The statement is quietly imparted, that people in love are often unaware of how lucky they truly are and are, in large part, so afraid to lose that love that they sabotage it.

The brilliance of the short lies in the universality of this message, and hence justly, Counting Water earned its festival kudos against well-polished animations with no plot. Art is often wonderful for art sake, but it’s so much more with a purpose in mind, one clearly established in this short and one worth noting.

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