Directed by Gabe Katz, Mike Murphy
A young woman enters into a journey of self-exploration, discovery, and identity. As she travels through the ephemeral, working through her understanding of self-perception, other travelers within the same universe try to join. These travelers soon realize that her story is not for them to mimic or assume, but to discover through their own experiences. They learn to accept that one can be empathetic to the experiences of others, without being central to the plot. These travelers become members of a creative community, observing and understanding a greater universal struggle: accepting oneself as a thread within the fabric of existence, and not the fabric itself. The young woman continues on her journey within the greater schema of reality. She endures everything and nothing all at once—accepting her present reality for its momentous nature, knowing it will be quickly lost to the vastness of time.
https://www.gabekatz.com/matter
Review by Parker Jesse Chase:
Matter is a meditation on identity, community, and the space between individuality and collective existence. The film follows a young woman on a journey of self-perception, where others attempt to step into her story only to realize it isn’t theirs to take. Instead, they’re reminded that empathy does not mean centering oneself in another’s path. Her movement through the ephemeral becomes a mirror for our own human tension: wanting to be both unique and connected, both the thread and the fabric.
The film opens in a stark white space, sterile and stripped down, our main figure in black, her face concealed by a helmet. The contrast is striking. A jazz-like wind instrument plays faintly, textured with background noise as if we’re overhearing it at a small cafe. Movement begins, fluid and deliberate, and the costuming folds into the choreography so naturally it feels like an extension of the body itself.
Soon another figure intrudes, removing the helmet, followed by more dancers drifting into the frame. At first, their presence is ambiguous. Are they invading her space, or offering community? That tension lingers as bodies multiply. Movements ripple, one blending into another, pairs forming and dispersing, a current of mimicry and fluidity that raises the question: how do we hold our own shape while surrounded by others?
Each dancer gets moments of individuality, flashes of expression through body and gesture. Yet as the camera widens, the ensemble surrounding them looks heavy, even sorrowful. Drooped shoulders, bleak expressions, a kind of condemnation of the one in focus. The group closes in, zombie-like, pushing forward and down to the floor. It reads as a physical metaphor for the struggle between breaking free and being pulled into the conformity of the whole.
The cycle repeats. The crowd fades, only for smaller sets of dancers to return, layered routines intersecting within the same space. Background noise swells, reminding us that life is always filled with unseen passerbyers, strangers whose presence is felt even without direct contact. Dancers clutch their hearts, shield their faces, run corner to corner grasping for any sense of individuality in a space that keeps inevitably folding back into the group itself.
The film circles back to its beginning. The helmet returns. The original figure collapses, body limp, hand dropped lifeless to the floor. The black helmet rests ahead of her, now transformed into a symbol of both burden and release, maybe even death. The film leaves us in that stillness, confronting the inevitability of returning to matter itself.
Gabe Katz’s hand is present throughout, not just as choreographer, but as a guiding force across costuming and the emotional architecture of the piece. Paired with Sam Gendel’s soundscape and the minimalist staging, Matter becomes less about watching a performance and more about feeling through one. It asks us to consider the truth that we are both small and infinite, fleeting but part of something vast.
We are matter. Sometimes we feel like the center of the room. Sometimes we dissolve into the crowd. Either way, we are here.
