Breaking tradition, Pitt employs many animation techniques throughout the film. She used chalk, sand, crushed paper and images scratched and painted directly on to 35mm film to evoke a particular mood.

For the scene with Santa Esmeralda, the saint of emptiness, Pitt used the services of filmmaker Naomi Uman, who scratched and painted directly on 35mm film. "I asked to make her own abstract interpretation of the saint," recalls Pitt, "I told her I would accept anything she did… so in this way she was the actress who played the part of the saint... in that slow-motion way only animator actors understand."

To give the scenes with the doctor and Caballita (the woman who thinks she's a horse) a nostalgic, old-fashioned quality, Pitt animated on paper and then stained and crushed the paper. She then drew into the wrinkled images with chalk pencils.

While the meaning of El Doctor is rife with possible interpretations, the message that comes through the cranky, cynical old doctor is that we tend to create our own strife. He sees an ugly, empty world so it remains just that. In a way, El Doctor is a slightly cruel film. The doctor is only shown another vision of the world as he's dying.

"I thought perhaps at the moment of death the doctor might realize that all the times he felt lousy about the world and ceased to care, he was creating the mess himself — with a different viewpoint the world was filled with possibility and beauty," notes Pitt. "Hopelessness itself creates futility, so he imagines returning to the hospital and seeing things anew. I don't think it matters whether he was able to live this way for years or only a few seconds in his mind — it still happened."

The meaning of El Doctor is open to interpretations, but the message that comes through the cranky, cynical old doctor is that we tend to create our own strife.

Does this moment of the divine matter in the end? Earlier in the film, the doctor says bitterly that life is nothing but a temptation, suggesting that one will never have their desires fulfilled. Is then death the satisfaction of those desires? "Well, that's an existential viewpoint, isn't it?" responds Pitt, "It doesn't matter whether the doctor was a good man or a bad man what matters is within himself at death... he sees the totality, the universe. It's as if the everything was giving him a smile and a nod and letting him dream away dressed in his beautiful mariachi suit with the light blue tie and riding his favourite imagined horse, and carrying his lovely girl from long ago who still wears her Mexican dress and braids her hair in the traditional style and holds him tightly as their footsteps slip away." In the end, the doctor's life amounts to little more than a moment, but what a moment it is.

"Is that all there is?" chimed Peggy Lee once upon a time.

That is all, and that ain’'t bad (don't matter if it is).

"Death," adds Pitt, is not so frightening when one believes that which we do not know clearly is larger than our small lives and therefore this large "other" will embrace our deaths with meaning."

So let's keep dancing.

A collection of Pitt’s films (Asparagus, Joy Street and El Doctor) will be released on DVD in September 2006 by First Run Features.

Chris Robinson has been with the Ottawa International Animation Festival since 1991. A noted animation critic, curator and historian, he has become a leading expert on Canadian and international independent animation. His acclaimed OIAF programming has been regarded as both thoughtful and provocative. In May 2004, Robinson was the recipient of the President’s Award given by the New York chapter of animators for contributions to the promotion of independent animation.

His books include Between Genius and Utter Illiteracy: A Story of Estonian Animation, Ottawa Senators: Great Stories from the NHL’s First Dynasty, Unsung Heroes of Animation, Great Left Wingers and Stole This From a Hockey Card: A Philosophy of Hockey, Doug Harvey, Identity & Booze.

An anthology of Robinson’s Animation Pimp columns will be published in 2006. He is working on Fathers of Night, a novel about angels, devils and everything in-between. Robinson lives in Ottawa with his wife, Kelly, and sons, Jarvis and Harrison.