Listening to the Land
A short documentary tracing restoration, memory, and relationship.
currently in post-production
This is a quiet project.
One that resists urgency, even as the world insists on it.
One that listens before it speaks.
Vesper Meadow is a beautiful organization located in a high mountain wetland in southern Oregon. They have their hands deep in the soil and their hearts open to the public. Both aspects of listening to how to restore the land.
Listening to the Land is a short documentary emerging alongside Under Review: Conservation - rooted in my ongoing collaboration with Vesper Meadow.
It is a film about learning how to be in relationship with her again.
What is Listening to the Land?
A poetic documentary tracing the restoration of a once-degraded wetland - told through the voices of those who return to it, care for it, and listen closely enough to be changed by it.
The film weaves together four perspectives:
A painter who returns each year to sit with the creek
An ecologist spearheading the organization and working to protect an endangered butterfly
An Indigenous land steward guiding healing-based restoration
A beaver restoration expert reshaping the watershed
Their work is not fast. It is not designed for consumer profit.
It is built on attention, patience, and relationship. And slowly - not even that slowly actually - the land responds.
Interwoven throughout the film are movement-based sequences. I find dance is a powerful embodied experience, helping to translate what cannot be spoken.
Voices Within the Film
Jeanine Moy - Director, Vesper Meadow
Stasie Maxwell - Indigenous Partnership Programs Manager
Jakob Shockey - Executive Director, Project Beaver
Sarah Burns - Painter
And the many hands, species, and unseen systems that shape the land itself.
Voices off Camera
Director - Kelly Ashton Todd
Producer - Chris Neighbors
Director of Photography - Tyler Sparks
Editor - Einy Åm Sparks
Choreographer - Kelly Ashton Todd in collaboration with dancers
Dancers - Truth Colón and Stephanie Crousillat
top left: Jeanine Moy, top right: Sarah Burns, bottom left: Jakob Shockey, bottom right: Stasie Maxwell
