Sacred Mountain

A film for A.R. Ammons, author of Garbage: A Poem (1993), and baculovirologist Lois Miller. 10 quintillion insects live on the planet—that is, 300 pounds of insects for every pound of human flesh. They drive decomposition, dissolution, and decay that makes way for the new. Specifically, darkling beetle larvae, Tenebrio molitor (roughly translated as "death spirits" and "millers"), better known as yellow mealworms, are capable of digesting Styrofoam by way of their gut microbiome, biodegrading the plastic waste into carbon and hydrogen. Their lives run counter to ours, which revolve around accumulation and accretion.

Humans have used moss for at 1,000 years to help heal their injuries. --Smithsonian Magazine, 2017. Mosses and other small beings issue an invitation to dwell for a time right at the limits of ordinary perception. --Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2003. The world now sacrifices everything to speed. Quiet seems to be regarded as a detestable condition to be expurgated by any means which applied science can devise.--F. Percy Smith (dir. Gathering Moss, 1933)

Here, a group of women tell of how they came to arrive at an isolated ashram atop a mountain and what life there has been like both before and after the death of their guru.

Boletus, amaryllis, anolis, listeria, wisteria, nematoceara: nothing is linear in evolution, nor in life nor in light. We radiate out on waves, then flux along the spokes of an orb-weaver’s web, the barbs of a boundary fence. Species in a constant state of exchange: elements, acids, sugars, viruses, ideas.

Underwater creatures—snapping shrimp, bearded seals, sperm whales—populate the soundscape here, alongside the ghost voice of biologist Lynn Margulis, who rails against authority, societal amnesia and easy answers to explain the beauty of complex inheritances.

The myth of the black mirror as a source of knowledge provides the platform for a deeply original film, which bridges scientific diligence with artistic freedom.

Radicals organize the chaotic swarm of characters into a logical system. Traditional Chinese groups all characters according to 214 radicals (simplified uses 189), which are organized based on the number of strokes into a chart called the bushou. Each radical is itself a freestanding character/word, such as one, woman, child, cliff, field, tree, millet, halberd, leather and bird.

Three years ago, honeybees started to disappear. Today there are at least 33% fewer bees in the U.S., and with bees helping to pollinate one in every three bites that we eat, everyone is at risk. We set out to discover what was plaguing these hives and learn how non-commercial beekeepers keep healthy bees alive.

what am I to do with my imagination—& the person in me trembles—& there is still innocence, it is starting up somewhere even now, and the strange swelling of the so-called Milky Way, and the sound of the wings of the bird as it lifts off ... what is coming, what is true, & all the blood, millennia, drained to stave off the future, stave off, & the armies on the far plains, the gleam off their armor now in this bird’s eye, as it flies towards me then over, & the sound of the thousands of men assembled at all cost now the sound of the bird lifting, thick, rustling where it flies over—only see, it is a hawk after all, I had not seen clearly, it has gone to hunt in the next field, & the chlorophyll is coursing, & the sun is sucked in, & the chief priest walks away now where what remains of the body is left as is customary for the local birds. —Jorie Graham, “Embodies” (excerpt)

A queer contemporary re-imagining of the Odyssey. Odysseus wracked with guilt for the loss of his crew returns home in search of a lost love. An experimental narrative told through still photographs, collage, video, found footage and animation.

A collision between the macro-collapse of ecosystems and the minutiae of cellular colonies in a story about unrestrained growth, waltzing mice, entropy, and the creatures that made Earth rich in oxygen while contaminating their own air.