GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE Documentary

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Jacquelyn Mills.

On the remote Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia lives conservationist Zoe Lucas. After first falling in love with the island as a bright-eyed art student in the ‘70s, Lucas became a self-taught naturalist and stayed as one of the few inhabitants for over four decades. Shot on 16mm film with all its analog imperfections and curiosities, Jacquelyn Mills captures the island’s rare biodiversity – of seaweed, snails, the majestic Sable Island horses – and the human who has dedicated her life to preserving its beauty against the alarming destruction of trash pollution and climate change. Through a series of conversations between the two women as they explore the land, we observe gentle wonders such as music arranged from electrodes tracking a beetle’s footsteps and experimental interludes of horse-hair-grafted, starlight-exposed film stock. At once genuine in gesture and meditative in form, the Berlinale triple winner GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE reveals a moving collaboration between filmmaker and scientist. –Anna Li