Water becomes thought. Aihara's hand-drawn abstractions don't depict a narrative, they ARE the narrative, specks growing into rivulets until you realize you've been watching the visible shape of something invisible the whole time. This is cinema as meditation, a 1977 experimental film that proves animation doesn't need characters or plot to break you open; it only needs a blue filter, 16mm stock, and an artist patient enough to let you see what happens when you stop looking for meaning and let it accumulate like water on glass.

Karma is a short experimental film from 1977 by Aihara Nobuhiro, built around the motif of water. At first only tiny specks drift across the screen like flurries of snow. Gradually they swell into bubbles, then into larger rivulets running over a transparent surface. The film is drawn by hand and seems to have been shot on 16mm through a blue filter. Rather than telling a conventional story, the piece draws its effect from this slow visual change, and it rewards viewers who give it patient, close attention.