A small section of the film focuses on ‘smell’, a hugely connecting sense of ours to emotion and memories. Do you deliberately consider any of our ‘senses’ in your creative process?
Great question! The film really is about connection, as is much of my work. Connection to ourselves and to the natural world. It’s difficult not to be connected to the natural world when you’ve chosen to live in a place like this. It underpins many of our lives in a way that I’m sure is different in an urban environment. For me personally, being connected means walking barefoot, getting wet and cold, swimming in the rivers, being on a mountaintop alone or with close friends as it gets dark, and documenting what I see, hear and feel about this place. So yeh, our senses link our inner world to our outer world and create a connection.
I know that Sam’s connection comes, in part, from building walls. Touching the stone, working in the soil - ‘getting in amongst it’. We both have kids, and I know that’s what we try to foster in them too. We want it to continue.
I think Sam and I both share the view that people’s obsession with technology takes us further away from ourselves and our environment, thus further breaking our connection. We all know where that break is taking us as a race. This film serves as some kind of protest against that. For me, Sam’s dog Eli was a perfect representation of an unbroken primal connection, and that’s why he ended up being a big part of the film.
During the filming and in the context of the next generation(s), did you feel a hope that our connectedness is going in the right direction, or was it more despair that we’re on the journey to a slow death re: connectedness and modernity with all its challenges?
That’s a difficult one to answer. Connection to the digital world seems, more often than not, to be prioritised over connection to the natural world. There is always hope, and we can see it in the projects that take place worldwide to protect the environment and the oceans, but I can’t pretend I’m not deeply worried about the future for my children. Human beings are profoundly flawed, and can be too easily waylaid by greed and the temptation to exploit, and evidence suggests that that’s not changing anytime soon. But we’re also capable of profound care and incredible innovation. Which way will we go? Gulp. I’m probably not the right person to ask…