‘ABALON’ presents the story of one art that we almost always seem to forget: the art of making fire dance, of making wax set the mood - in other words, the art of candle making. In this short documentary, Vahid Keshavarz focuses on the process of candle making, and how delicate and personal this form of art is. Ana Bridgwater is the creator of these candles, the mother of the wax; her business is to make the most out of ceramics, oils, and different substances only to create a new scent, a new type of candle.

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Ana talks about her passion with such candor that it seems like what she does is one of the most fragile, and at the same time, important things in her world. She works with her materials in the same way poets work with words, the final result resembling, as in the case of poets, a poetry felt through all senses. Each candle is a poem, and the burning wick is a performance of that poem, a performance that each and every time is different from the others and so unique that no one will be able to reproduce it. 

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The camera work in ‘ABALON’ is exquisite – Vahid Keshavarz took this documentary to another level, and made it viewer-friendly from the very beginning. The story is well structured, getting all the information you are prone to get from the narrative, avoiding the classic situations where half of the story is presented in the film logline. The score makes the whole candle-making seem like a dance of impeccable ballerinas who are jumping and dancing without making any noise on the stage. Fire is life, and each spark of light that burns the wick of the candle is creating life. Vahid Keshavarz’s short tackles the emotional realm of the viewer, pressing the right buttons to make you want to hit replay as soon as it ends.

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Written by Vlad A. G