Documentaries

* A audiovisual essay. As a tree withstands the seasons, fall comes as a metaphor of the storm produce by human destruction. We aim to contrast a tree’s slow, natural, seasonal cycle with that of the rush and bustle in a human’s life and busy schedule that consumes our thoughts. Our film will consist of three visual essays: (1) an observation of fall and what the slow cycle of nature means to a tree, (2) the introduction of humans to this natural cycle and how they disrupt trees; the destruction that ensues, and (3) a focus on a brewing storm, demonstrating a tree’s resilience and human destruction.

* Access to green space has enormous implications for the health and wellbeing of a community, and green space issues in Durham are under covered. By 2050, 68% of the global population will live in cities . As cities become denser, environmental health issues like air pollution and the urban heat island effect will become more prevalent. One way to improve the health of city residents is to have public green spaces available for residents to enjoy. Green space refers to outdoor areas covered with vegetation that are accessible to the public, such as parks, nature trails, green roofs, etc. A growing body of research shows that access to green space reduces stress and boosts both mental and physical health . In fact, studies have shown that access to green spaces help people live longer . However, access to green space is not equal among all populations. A report from The Center for American Progress and the Hispanic Access Foundation shows that BIPOC communities experience “nature deprivation” at three times the rate of white Americans . This translates to negative health effects for these communities.

* In The Lifeline of Chapel Hill: Saving Booker Creek, we follow the journey of a group of concerned yet determined neighbors turned activists who live near the Booker Creek watershed in Chapel Hill, NC, which is around 4,098.5 acres large. After hearing that a plan to clear cut 50 acres of mature bottomland forest in order to build seven storage basins, concerned researchers, professors, and residents rallied together to form the Book Creek Alliance, a grassroots activist organization, committed to getting the original stormwater basin plan rejected. Members of the Alliance explain the worrying lack of ecological and climate change impact analysis of the study and emphasized the weaknesses behind their arguments that deforestation would reduce stormwater flows.

* During isolation, many people rediscovered the outdoors. This is a narrated photography project that focuses on different individual's connections to nature in an effort to escape the loneliness of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a reminder that the stark contrast that we sometimes make between nature and people is not real, that everything we do is a part of our environment and the environment is always a part of us.

* I made "Elegy for Central Campus" after getting lost on Duke University's torn down Central Campus. It felt like the abandoned buildings and empty fields held a secret I had yet to discover. When I returned with my camera, the campus opened up to me, showing an environment resurrected by its animal inhabitants. I refer to "Elegy for Central Campus" as a party funeral, viewing the destruction of the campus as a point of rebirth and reclamation by the land's original inhabitants.

* A recounting of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Way through the Woods" accompanying 16mm film shot in the Duke gardens. I want the piece to serve as a reflective space for the viewer, helping them focus on their interactions with nature and have a sense of nostalgia about a quickly disappearing nature.

15 pairs of eyes. One space. Sarah Duke Gardens. A work in progress. Narrating Nature. Fall 2021.

A pandemic film: Who is going to be looking at this? - People who are already thinking about their consumption as part of a larger system of doom. - Contextualizing fully what consumer choice means. Its limits and advantages to open space for self-criticism. - There are people that care about climate change and the environment but in their day-to-day (habitual) actions they don’t entirely act in a way that matches their goals. - Is it because they’re negligent of the impact they have? yes but not willfully. - Is it because they’re trapped in objective conditions they can’t escape, maybe. - Atomization breeding selfishness through cynicism. You can’t do anything by yourself to change it so fuck-it. - De-socializing to the extent that we can’t conceptualize. - What if we show my cart full. Show the carts of everyone in the store are also full. - Show how many carts of X bad product “cart full of X” there are in a simple way. - To connect to the total unfathomable number. - Using archival footage (increase in speed and intensity our experience of today) - Consumerism, celebrated Fordist America to the limit of reproduction of madness. - The 1940s-70s. - Mom and pop; local, not too scalable (might be more sustainable) - Malls (1980-the 2000s) - Create so much excess/garbage - Internet age (2010-the 2020s) - Computer bubble - Self-criticism by interrogating how we reproduce this trash ourselves by literally exposing it with computer technology.

We are disconnected from the amount of energy and electricity we use through our internet actions. Most people aren’t aware of how the things they save or mindlessly subscribe to have serious environmental implications. We are aware of the impacts that our “in person” actions have on the environment, but we are unaware of the impacts that our internet actions have on the environment. The goal of this documentary is to bridge that gap by making our audience more aware of how their behaviors on the internet like data storage, keeping old emails, saving everything to the cloud can have impacts on the environment. This discussion will lead us to challenge how we think about e-waste by broadening its current perception of physical electronic trash and disposal to something that encompasses the way we excessively save and hoard onto every document, email, and picture requiring large amounts of electricity and energy usage. This will then allow us to discuss data centers and bring in the figures on how much energy and electricity data centers use and how that is the pressing environmental issue for this documentary.

Hurricane Florence destroyed the dam holding the "Big Lake" in place in Boiling Springs Lakes, NC. This is the man-made lake where I grew up.Through 16mm film, I return to the lake to explore the environment and how the earth reclaiming itself resonates with me as I reflect on trauma and family.