Titanium in Gilbert, a huge audience hit when it premiered last year at Carrboro's Flicker Festival, is an absorbing, expressionistic study of a man's knee-replacement operation. In his film, Vuncannon coaxed gorgeous images out of black and white Super-8 stock. His assured camera movements and rhythmic editing were intoxicating.

Using various subjective techniques, Vuncannon effectively conveyed the excruciating pain his subject was experiencing, and leavened his film with considerable humor. In terms of visual excitement and aesthetic adventurism, Titanium in Gilbert was the real deal. It demonstrated Vuncannon's interest in following the genre-busting footsteps of such idiosyncratic and legendary documentarians as Werner Herzog (Lessons of Darkness, My Best Fiend), Errol Morris (Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, The Thin Blue Line) and Les Blank (Burden of Dreams, Gap-Toothed Women, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe).