Brigid McCaffrey

Five years of traveling through and living within the Mojave Desert have instilled in geologist Ren Lallatin intimate relations to its geological formations. She studies the desert, tracing its volcanic and seismic actualities, locates water sources and the relics of previous inhabitants and identifies landscape features that will conceal her mobile shelter from public view. The film follows the geologist as she describes her interactions with the natural world, while declaring her rejection of land regulation and privatization.

Sanctuary Station traces a series of encounters with women and youth who have cultivated intrinsic attachments to the various life forms inhabiting the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Oscillations between the desire for solitude and the need for collaboration recur through an album-like progression of personal stories and actions. These encounters are framed through the poems of Mary Norbert Korte (1934-2022), an ex-nun who built her own cabin deep in the forest, adjacent to a former logging railroad. Korte’s life and work bear witness to the daily phenomena of internal and external experience. Depictions of ongoing forest defense movements, collective and personal rites of mourning, and intimate everyday routines evoke cycles of life unfolding within this intricately interwoven environment.

Geologist Ren Lallatin has moved into a small housing complex located between a rail yard and the interstate. Desert vistas are replaced with an arsenal of tactile pursuits, while the situation of the house becomes unstable. Free falling from a fixed point, the perimeter is ornamented for security. Desert winds animate aluminum mobiles and seismic vibrations serenade the home.

Through softly textured 16mm photography and regional iconography, Silva offers a modernist reflection on two of upstate New York’s most storied 19th century touchstones—the landscape painters of the Hudson River School and the legend of Rip Van Winkle—nodding to a few musical heroes along the way.

Following five American travelers, this film journeys though the shifting surroundings of a retired carnival worker, young woman trucker, railroad executive, chimney sweep/surfer, and a nun/riverboat pilot. Each reflects on their work and the worlds they traverse, the fleeting and familiar elements of a life in motion and the delicate contract between desire and necessity.