Geographies of Solitude

Two women on a lonely island off the coast of Nova Scotia: Sable Island. Conservationist Zoe Lucas was an art student when she came there for the first time in the 1970s and has been living on this remote strip of land for decades now, mostly alone. Director Jacquelyn Mills films Lucas on her daily trips around the island to observe the local flora and fauna. Her studies of Sable Island’s population of wild horses, for which the island is famous, and of the biodiversity there in general have made the self-taught scientist an esteemed expert. Collecting the alarming amounts of plastic washing up also forms part of Lucas’ everyday life. Mills films on 16 mm, which lends a special beauty to the barren landscape. Science and art fuse in the two women’s activities, each enriching the other. The movements of beetles are made into music. Horse manure provides useful data for Lucas and is just as useful for Mills’s experiments in film exposure and developing, along with algae and other vegetation. When Mills loads the final film reel into her camera, it’s not just the shoot that’s coming to an end, but also a special encounter between two people. A twinge of melancholy is unavoidable. (Anna Hoffmann)

Jacquelyn Mills, born in 1984 in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. She studied film and works as a director, cinematographer, editor and sound designer. Following her mid-length film In the Waves (2017), Geographies of Solitude is her feature debut.

Production Rosalie Chicoine Perreault, Jacquelyn Mills. Production companies Rosalie Chicoine Perreault (Montreal, Canada), Jacquelyn Mills (Montreal, Canada). Director Jacquelyn Mills. Cinematography Jacquelyn Mills Additional Camera: Scott Moore. Editing Jacquelyn Mills Additional Editor: Pablo Alvarez-Mesa. Sound design Andreas Mendritzki, Jacquelyn Mills. Sound Jacquelyn Mills. Executive producer Brad Mills. With Zoe Lucas.

Films: 2008: For Wendy (10 min.). 2013: Leaves (5 min.). 2017: In the Waves (59 min.). 2022: Geographies of Solitude.

Bonus Material