Director's Works
A Body Called Life Spencer MacDonald
Spencer MacDonald (he/him) is a Berlin-based director, born in NYC and raised in San Francisco. Blending documentary and fiction, his work explores the strange overlap of human stories and environmental mysteries. His debut short, Scarlet Medusa—about a jellyfish that may live forever—premiered on Nowness and screened at festivals like Palm Springs International ShortFest and the Atlanta Film Festival, where it earned a jury mention. His follow-up, A Body Called Life, has played at over 35 festivals, won more than a dozen awards, and qualified for the 2025 Oscars. His films have been featured by The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Vimeo’s "Best of the Year." On the commercial side, he’s directed for Nike, Airbnb, AllTrails, VW, Rapha, Allbirds, and more.
This film began a couple of years ago when my friend Eva Verbeeck and I first came across James Weiss’ Instagram (@jam_and_germs). I was charmed by the creatures he was able to film through his microscope and the tender lens through which he narrated their lives. I was particularly intrigued by how he would also narrate his own life in the third person and the way he was sharing his journey with therapy. After dozens of phone calls, I came to know James as one of the most sensitive, loving humans I have ever met—a person who has been through the lowest lows and is yet still able to connect to the magic of this life.
We embarked on making a film that would be a blend of documentary and fiction, one in which all of the words that made up the script came directly from what he himself had written in his Instagram posts and stories. From there, we made a storyboard, and James was all set to be the star in a film about his life.
Two-thirds of life on this planet is invisible to the human eye, and yet we know so little about it. We wonder if there are aliens beyond Earth, but we can see them right below us through a microscope: rotifers, water bears, paramecia, ciliates. This film offers a perspective on the usually overlooked phenomena of the natural world, presented through the lens of a gentle human who is processing c-PTSD via a warm connection with these beings.
