Brigid McCaffrey: Three Desert Films

AM/PM

Brigid McCaffrey in person!

Filmforum is delighted to welcome Los Angeles-based filmmaker Brigid McCaffrey with three of her recent films, including one area premiere and one world premiere! McCaffrey has been making unconventional explorations of land and water for several years, recently wandering the byways and fault lines of Southern California. These three films portray individual navigations of regional landscapes; a major reservoir and recreational site at the edge of Los Angeles County, a defunct mining town turned tourist attraction, and the ranging geologic formations of the Mojave Desert. Amidst these precarious landscapes we spend time with subjects living through transitions, experiencing solitude, seeking camaraderie, and reflecting on how and where to land.

Brigid McCaffrey is a Los Angeles-based documentary and experimental filmmaker working in film and video. Her films have screened at various venues including the Rotterdam International Film Festival, DocLisboa, Torino International Film Festival, Cinema du Reel, Images Festival, and Other Cinema. Her film Castaic Lake was awarded Best Cinematography at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2011. She received an MFA in Film and Video from CalArts in 2009 and has taught at the California State Summer School for the Arts, Venice Arts, and the University of California, San Diego.

Filmography:
Paradise Springs (33:00, HD, 2013)
Castaic Lake (28:30, 16mm, 2010)
AM/PM (9:00, 16mm, 2010)
Tjúba Ten/The Wet Season, co-directed w/ Ben Russell (47:00, 16mm, 2008)
Lay Down Tracks, co-directed w/ Danielle Lombardi (61:00, 16mm, 2006)

Castaic Lake

(2010, 16mm, color, sound, 28:30)
Taking its course, the camera drifts in to the coves and surveys the shorelines of a multi-use reservoir to unearth fragments of its young history and consider a series of possible relationships to this artificial environment. The place, shaped both by infrastructural regulations and environmental shifts, suggests an approach to the film’s making, so that every physical region proposes a distinct filmic activity: direct interview narratives, observations of everyday proceedings, notations of changing weather, and impromptu interactions amongst friends all vie to claim their own piece of the record. Relayed through the periodic encounters of a singular visitor, these observations attempt to develop a connection to this highly orchestrated landscape.

AM/PM

(2010, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min.) Los Angeles premiere!

Off hours spent wandering a ghost town playground in the Mojave Desert, a young Sikh man considers his recent relocation.

Paradise Springs

(2013, color, sound, HD, 1920x1080, 33 min.) World premiere!
A geologist studies the Mojave Desert; she traces its volcanic and seismic actualities, locates water sources and the relics of previous inhabitants, and identifies landscape features that will conceal her mobile shelter from public view. Five years of traveling through and living within this desert have shaped intimate relations to its geologic formations. The film consists of a succession of roving soliloquies and terrain crossings as the wandering geologist describes her interactions with the natural world, while declaring her rejection of the persistent claims on land regulation. This portrait offers an invitation into the contemplations of solitude and fragments of a personal mythology set within a geologic existence.