The time-lapse images are brilliant. They evoke memories from documentary footage of A-bomb testing, to Koyaanisqatsi, to Disney true-life adventures, and to classroom science films of plants twisting in a heliotropic dance. I saw ballet movements, graceful and delirious. I watched grids of wire and drying pulp looking like activated diagrams of curvature in time-space, influenced by gravity and the cellular memories of the constituent fibers, as an expression of the pregnant chaos within physics. How one traditionally dries paper is one of the most time-consuming parts of an already laborious enterprise. Generally it involves forcing a naturally volumetric material to lay flat. Hiebert works in mediation with fibers. She does not waste time training her paper to lie down. Her paper objects take their own form naturally. All three of the collaborators; artist Helen Hiebert, videographer Gretchen Hogue, and musician Kell Black have made a beautiful film. I have only one criticism. The introductory story of a friend's experience with children who had never seen paper was unnecessary and unconvincing. It did not properly function to frame the viewer's pending experience. That out of the way, I can return to my praise. One of the best parts of the film is the Extras. The Secret Life of Paper was hands-down poetic. A compilation of all of the individual time-lapse pieces sewn together, it unfolded like a dance of fibers. The second, silent version of The Secret Life of Paper is rigged to loop indefinitely, so beware to watch when you do not have pending appointments, or you may find yourself hypnotized by the repetitions.