Climate Crisis + Media Arts Showcase, Night I: Sanctuary Stations

In 2022-2023, the Climate Crisis + Media Arts working group of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University (CC+MA) announced a one-time grant of up to $10000 to support the production of film and media art that creatively address the human and nonhuman experiences of climate crisis. From the over 150 submissions, CC+MA’s panel of Northwestern graduate students, scholars of environmental history, and industry professionals selected 10 promising media projects. The supported works adopt a range of unconventional approaches to sound and image, collectively addressing everything from declining bee populations to undersea mining to worm farming.

Throughout 2024-2025, Block Cinema will be welcoming Climate Crisis + Media Arts Fund-supported artists in person to showcase completed and in-progress projects. Many of these screenings will be the first public presentations of these works, allowing Block audiences to help shape the dialogue around innovative and throught-provoking films that address the cutting edge of climate transformation and adaptation.

CC+MA’s November showcase features two nights of Chicago debuts of short and feature films, all shown with artists present for discussion.

Works screened on Night I include:

Heaven in a Wild Flower

(dir. Jesseca Simmons, 6 min, USA, digital)

In Heaven in a Wild Flower we immerse ourselves in a lyrical exploration of the perilous consequences of pesticides on bees and their intricate ecosystem. In a mesmerizing microscopic world, science meets artistry, fraught with danger and beauty.

THE CAVE WITHOUT A NAME

(dir. Jessica Bardsley, 15 min, USA, digital)

Amidst a world colonized by light, The Cave Without a Name takes viewers on a journey from a dystopian realm of light pollution and overwork to an appreciation of night and nocturnal life as reservoirs of resistance and healing. The Cave Without a Name connects the DarkSky movement’s efforts to protect darkness; a night worker’s efforts to restore her circadian rhythm; the preservation of bat habitats; and more metaphorical perspectives on night and nocturnal life that range from the idea that “rest is resistance” to an appreciation of dream life and the night as a time for creative production. The film’s night creatures and dedicated dreamers offer generative and life-giving possibilities, opening onto broader existential questions about human and nonhuman life and our inextricably intertwined fates.

SANCTUARY STATION

(dir. Brigid McCaffrey, 69 min, USA, 16mm-to-digital)

SANCTUARY STATION contrasts stories of deliberate solitary retreat with portraits of collective communities amid the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Oscillations between the desire for solitude and the need for collaboration are traced through a series of encounters with women and youth who have formed intrinsic attachments to the many forms of life that surround them. These encounters are framed through the poems of Mary Norbert Korte (1934-2022), a former nun who built her own cabin deep in the forest, adjacent to a former logging railroad. Korte’s life and work bear witness to the daily phenomena of internal and external experience. Depictions of ongoing forest defense actions, ceremonial and personal rites of mourning, and intimate everyday routines evoke cycles of life unfolding within this intricately interwoven environment.

Presented with support from the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University.

About the artists:

Jessica Bardsley (she/they) is an artist and scholar working across film, writing, and studio art. Her films have screened across the U.S. and internationally at festivals like Sundance, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, EMAF, RIDM, True/False, and on the Criterion Channel. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Princess Grace Award, Grand Prize at 25FPS, the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Short Film at Punto de Vista, and numerous Harvard Film Study Center fellowships. Her short films are distributed by the Video Data Bank, Light Cone, and V-Tape. Her first feature film, The Cave Without a Name, participated in the 2022 Venice Biennale Cinema College, and has been supported by NYSCA, UnionDocs, Northwestern, NYU, a Princess Grace Foundation Special Project Grant, and more. Her research and writing have been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. She received a Ph.D. in Film and Visual Studies from Harvard University and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Brigid McCaffrey is a Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker whose work documents environments and people in states of flux. Her films explore extremes of autonomy and coexistence experienced by individuals who have distinct relationships with the land. Often taking shape as nuanced portraits, the films respond to the physical and emotional changes of their subjects while fusing representations of self and place. She has exhibited at venues such as the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Whitechapel Gallery, and in film festivals including Ambulante, Frontiera Festival, Images Festival, New York Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival, among others. Her work was presented by Ballroom Marfa for Artist’s Film International, the Flaherty Seminar, and the Pesaro Film Festival. McCaffrey was named a Guggenheim fellow in Film & Video in 2019.

Jesseca Ynez Simmons is a filmmaker who employs a sensorial approach exploring ways for form to be an extension of content. Her films have screened at the Austin Film Festival, Hot Docs, among others. Recurring themes in her work include social justice, the environment, gender, and female perspectives. Some achievements include the Director’s Award for Artistic Merit from the Santa Cruz Film Festival for her documentary, I Can Only Be Mary Lane, and recognition from the American Society of Cinematographers for her work on Emerald Ice, a short ‘docufantasy’ exploring the life of American Poet Diane Wakoski. She is the Founder of the Dayton Independent Film Festival and served as its Director from 2019 to 2022. Currently, she is editing the feature film The Foolishness of God: A Forgiveness Journey with Desmond Tutu (dir. Karen Hayes).

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