This experimental documentary by Jacquelyn Mills explores Sable Island, a thin strip of land in the Atlantic Ocean with a unique ecosystem.
Naturalist and environmentalist Zoe Lucas has lived on Sable Island for over forty years: she documents its daily life, observes its inhabitants, and picks up the rubbish brought to its shores by the waves. Following Lucas in her observations of animals, plants, and traces of human activity, Mills has created something more ambitious than merely her portrait—a study of the island as a complex system of connections between living creatures, the landscape, and material objects. Its preparation has included work with the materiality of the film: shot on 16mm film, it also includes images created with the use of local plants, seaweed, and other elements of the environment during exposure and development.
The soundscape is also derived from the island’s environment, using contact microphones, hydrophones, and electrodes to capture the movement of insects and snails, the underwater sounds of oceans and ponds, and the rhythms of plants transformed into sound. The island’s inhabitants are not simply objects of observation but participants contributing to the making of the film’s soundtrack.
Working with material traces of life, Mills poses the question of how the world around us can take part in the making of images. In this rare example of ecological filmmaking, its production supports and emphasizes its message, and its equal attention to humans, animals, and the landscape changes the act of observation.
The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2022, where it received three awards. Later, it won the Grand Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival and dozens of other international awards.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Geographies of Solitude
Director: Jacquelyn Mills
Canada, 2022. 103 min.
18+