By Rachel Flanagan.
Ed Pincus was well-known as a pioneer to first person documentary films. One Cut, One Life is one last film Ed made with Lucia Small, who had previously collaborated on an earlier film,
"The Axe in the Attic" (2007). The film is a documentation of two filmmakers trying to come to grips with death while also looking back on their partnership and how they both used filmmaking to deal with the difficulties that life often thrusts upon the living.
The film is really Lucia Small's story about herself and her friend, Ed Pincus, who has been diagnosed with a fatal disease myelodysplastic syndrome or MDS in addition to Parkinson's disease, which he had already been living with. Lucia reflects back on her life with film from wanting to document her crush on Paul Giamatti to make sense of being single to two of her closest friends who both died suddenly within weeks of each other. When Lucia found out her friend Ed was only given a short time to live, she wanted to document the memories in a film, much to the dismay of Ed's wife, Jane. The collaboration between Ed and Lucia was something that invigorated them but placed a strain on Ed's marriage because Jane just couldn't understand the relationship or why they brought camera's into their personal space. 
One Cut, One life is one final collaboration between Lucia and her mentor focusing on each of their pasts and the present state of Ed's terminal illness. Lucia keeps the film very personal opening up about her connection with Ed and how she feels about his disease and ultimate death and uses this film to document her memories so that she can continue to look back and cope once the inevitable happens. Ed Pincus passed away at the age of 75 from MDS on November 5, 2013 but his legacy will live on in the documentaries he created, including this one, and with the lives he touched.
One Cut, One Life provides a strong and personal colloquy between two filmmakers confronting death and in turn, life, in the only way that they know how - through a camera. Watch
Trailer
dvd available for purchase: http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/onecutonelifehv.html
