About the Film

As fascinating as it is meditative as it is hilarious. WORK IN PROGRESS is a documentary film that begins as a chronicle of the construction of a 1000-foot dry-stone wall by a novice builder on a large property in rural Quebec. The builder, Chris Overing, sets out on September 11th, 2001 to complete the stone structure within eight weeks. The filmmaker conceived of this film as a straightforward telling of this laborious yet creative task, but both projects evolved into something altogether different.

Almost immediately, the neophyte stonemason realizes he has woefully underestimated the time and energy required to complete his task. After years of frustration, filming is wrapped. At that moment the wall is less than two-thirds complete. During the preceding eight years, the filmmaker's expectations for his film project unraveled as Chris' expectation for his building project were challenged and revised. During this process, their respective artistic projects confront them like monstrous children grown out of proportion, threatening their sense of personal identity and their sense of creative effectiveness.

The film is presented in a chronological narrative fashion, following each progressive year of work on the wall and the characters that lend their labour to the endeavour. Chris is joined by others seeking personal deliverance through dedication to this monumental physical and creative challenge. However, the film moves away from documenting the orderly progression of the wall, and turns toward exploring the emergent relationship between an increasingly frustrated filmmaker and his diligent yet thwarted main character. The filmmaker seeks his own artistic deliverance through other "artists" in Scotland and New York. As this occurs, his own reflections and commentary on the process trickle into the film, revealing the deeper motivations driving his relationship to the subject and his own creative expectations.

A FILM ABOUT EXPECTATIONS

It's the story of two artists who inadvertently link their creative forces in a relationship that is at once co-dependent, antagonistic and profoundly rewarding. By the end of the film, Chris struggles with the possibility of abandoning his first major artistic project, as the filmmaker struggles with a documentary vastly different from the one he had initially conceived.

WORK IN PROGRESS takes viewers through the insane and passionate journeys of two artists questioning the unexpectedly massive undertaking of their chosen "art" projects; reminding us all that sometimes art (and life) is as much about the process of creation than it is about the finished product.

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