
Living with Us
Three animal trainers work through the slow, repetitive business of shaping behavior, and director Bronwen Parker-Rhodes' camera stays back far enough to catch it without interrupting it. There is little voiceover and no score pushing you toward a reaction, just verbal cues, treats, corrections, and the long stretches of repetition that training actually requires. The film does not name its species or locations on screen; instead it stays close on hands, gestures, and the small adjustments trainers make when an animal balks or complies. Patience is the visible subject: sessions run long, trainers grow visibly tired, and the animals sometimes cooperate and sometimes do not. It is Spine TV's first full-length production, and the observational approach, watching rather than explaining, is the whole method. What the film offers is proximity to a relationship usually seen only in finished performance, caught instead in its unfinished, effortful middle.