Dust: No Subject Too Small

After a successful run on the festival circuit, the feature-length "Dust," by German documentary filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky, arrives in theaters this month. (Bitomsky has been Dean of the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia since 1993.)

The New York Times called it "eccentric and profoundly informative." If its glowing review is any indication, "Dust" should prove once and for all that no subject matter is too small for a videojournalist's consideration:

His film is both an essay and an exposé, a meditation on the philosophical implications of dust — which exists, according to one of his interview subjects, in a liminal state between matter and nonmatter — and an analysis of its place in the physical world.

Which is, of course, everywhere. Scenes of professional cleaners in offices and laboratories, and of ordinary people tidying up their homes, only emphasize the futility of trying to control or eradicate dust. And visits to abandoned industrial sites and demolished buildings show that, left to its own devices, dust will take over the world...

Comprehensive though it is, “Dust” feels like a preliminary investigation, a pilot for a multi-episode, hundred-hour series that would track dust all around the world.