This film began when I was four years old, watching the news with my grandmother. There was a story of a woman who lived alone on a remote island in the Northwest Atlantic. Sable Island was described as a crescent-shaped strip of sand, home to seals, wild horses, and shipwrecks. This legend stayed with me, and thirty years later I met Zoe Lucas. It was the mythology that brought me to her but it was everything else that captivated me and led to the making of this film.
I made three trips to the island by private charter plane, shooting on 16mm film. My first trip, serving as a one-person team, was in winter 2017. I remember a few hundred thousand seals littering the beach, raging blizzards, and sand in every crevice of gear My hands were raw from operating the camera in the exposed winter weather while I carried heavy film gear through the sand by foot. As Zoe guided me across the land, these physical challenges seemed irrelevant in the face of such a full reality. The island itself was like no place I have ever encountered. The animals there endure extreme elements yet seem to thrive on their island paradise, virtually untouched by man and without predators. Lifecycles are uniquely visible; bodies naturally melt back into the land and birth often happens within reach of death. This place appeared to be a wild sanctuary, with a caretaker who has devoted over 40 years to studying and tending to its nethermost details. Yet it is being invaded.
Marine litter of all sizes persistently washes up on the shores of Sable Island. Zoe diligently collects, cleans, sorts, and catalogues her findings, in her long-term study of pollution trends in the Northwest Atlantic. I was shocked and disturbed by Zoe’s discoveries. In between my trips I searched for ways I could cinematically underline the fragility of our environment. I created a series of eco-friendly experiments using specimens from Zoe’s Institute. I hand-processed film in native Sable Island plants, exposed film with moonlight and starlight, painted film with non-toxic emulsion, and spliced marine litter and plant matter to film.
At a time when our environmental crisis has never been more urgent, I wholeheartedly believe cinema can facilitate our healing process with the natural world.
My explorations expanded into the realm of sound. Of all of the elements I experienced on this journey, it was the sounds of Sable Island that haunted me the most. Using homemade, non-toxic contact microphones, underwater hydrophones, and electrodes that translated bug and plant frequencies to musical patterns, I created a soundscape that was almost entirely recorded with and within the island.
At a time when our environmental crisis has never been more urgent, I wholeheartedly believe cinema can facilitate our healing process with the natural world. I have devoted my work to this notion. While filming GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE I had tucked in my back pocket this beloved quote from Thomas Merton: “We will never love nor save what we do not experience as sacred.”
Jacquelyn Mills
