Within the folds of Miguel de Cervantes', Don Quixote de la Mancha, there lay two beautiful chapters that probe the depths of human love, relationship, self deception, and hasty judgments. It is the story of the lover Chrysostom whose demise is blamed on Marcela, a noble woman forced by her exceeding beauty to retreat into the mountains to live the life of a shepherdess.

Our adaptation distills Cervantes' moving portrait of Chrysostom's false love and Marcela's eloquent defense of her innocence, and brings it into a modern context to form a 10 minute film shot in a wood in Canada's hinterland, in documentary style, employing a rich "lithographic" film technique.

Marcela: Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation?