Ep 257: The Intersection of Anthropology and Cinema: Natalie Zimmerman’s Approach

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFH podcast Network.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
ifhpodcastnetwork dot com. Natalie, how are you today.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm doing well. Thank you. I'm so honored to be
here with you today in this conversation at this important moment.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thank you so much. I'm honored to have you on
the podcast. I've wanted to speak to you for a while,
so this is a great day having you on Filmmaking Conversations.
Thank you so Natalie. Before we get into it, will
give us a bit of a breakdown of your background
and how you came to become a filmmaker.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Sure, I mean, I thought I wanted to be a
cultural and social anthropologist, and when I was younger, I
did a lot of traveling and exploring, and upon my
return I worked at the Smithsonian for a while on
International Center, and I went and you know, even did

(01:03):
a class in the Bay Area and culture and social anthropology,
and I think I decided, after some conversations and taking
this class that it wasn't for me because of the
overly prescriptive way that one could express their ideas that
they you know, I wanted to be more conversation and
dialogue and use use my experiences as a way to

(01:28):
transform myself and understand things around me. So I chose
not film right away. Actually I moved. I decided to
do photography, and then I ended up doing and I
am a Master's of Fine Art at cal Arts at
Calverrine Institute of the Arts, and I was doing a

(01:49):
lot of different things, not not mainly film. Actually I
was doing social practice, performance things. I was doing multiple
channel instatlyations. I was doing some photographies with some writing.
It was more interdisciplinary. I was like playing around with
ideas of social structures. Like I did a piece on

(02:11):
the tango, I did a performance on utopian visions. So
I had this broad basic experiences and practices. And what
was really important to me then and still is as
I wanted to be collaborative and interdisciplinary and the process

(02:34):
of my creative process. I wanted it to be enlivening
and not like a closed box. So like I'm always
exploring in my creative process and open to things coming
in and new ideas shifting me. That's what's exciting about
it for me. And then I was living in Los

(02:55):
Angeles and I did I was invited to share a film.
It's one of my first experimental films called Islands. When
I graduated with my MFA, I wanted to continue exploring,
and so I did this project where I had a
series of casting calls with actors and they would come

(03:18):
to my house and I would allow them to be
alone in my house and have them turn on the
camera and speak to the camera. The camera was the
only witness, and I would ask them to cry, and
then I'd have them turn off the camera and I'd
go back in and the second part was tell me
what it was you were thinking about when you cried,
And this was really I did this for a number

(03:39):
of months where they would leave and I wouldn't know
what was left on that tape. And basically this film, Islands,
wove together bits and pieces fragments to create a landscape
of la which was I think about dislocation and loneliness
and a lot of things came out in that piece

(04:02):
and that I was invited to show it here at
SF Camera Work in San Francisco. So I was really
working more around ideas and social practice, which brought me
to more experimental forms of film, and then I kept
doing that in different situations. I was in residence at
the Headline Center for the Arts. I went to Vienna

(04:23):
on a fulbright where I was working with social dreaming
and a social imaginary. I was at the DeYoung twenty
first Century Dreaming. There was the Arab Revolution was going
on at that time, and a lot of other movement.
And then that when I came out of that, I
was I launched. I started the first trip to this

(04:45):
place that I didn't know about care boss, which is
I'm touring with now, which is called Oceania Journey to
the Center. That's a very long answer, Damien. IM realize.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
It's a detailed on set what I like Oceana approaches
climate change for a deeply personal and cultural lens. How
did your belief in the natural world's influence in the
film's narrative, structure and visual language.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Oh wow, I think I think I was drawn to
that place because I heard headlines, you know, these predictions
about this place that I never heard of. I also
heard a story that was more intimately related to the situation.

(05:37):
A friend of mine was working with a nonprofit that
brought together a conference on resiliency with low lying island
presidents or face with sea level rise and climate change,
and she shared that when it came to the president
of the time, and note the tongue he wept. And

(06:00):
it was profound because all of them in that circle
did the same. It was kind of beyond words. They
couldn't express what they were fearing in that moment together
in that room not stay with me. And hearing these
headlines stayed with me as well. And I was doing research,

(06:23):
and I was also teaching at UC Berkeley at the time,
and I was invited to apply for a professional development grant,
and I wrote it to go to this place because
of these two things that I had heard, and the
fact that this was a place that was predicted to
go away that I'd never even known existed. And I
got it. And so when I went, I don't think

(06:47):
I realized how this sensuous quality of that place would
actually impact and transform me. I don't think I had
any idea. I'd never been on an island like that,
so small and so surrounded by this vast sea, and

(07:08):
to land there and be there, I knew what I
didn't want after reading the news and the headlines, which
felt to me very objectifying, very dehumanizing, of these people,
and so I decided I wasn't going to have any interviews,

(07:29):
any any formal anything with politicians or climate scientists that
might be there, researchers. And so I knew that because
I was coming out of this social Dreaming project at
the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and it was
all about this idea that I was playing around with,

(07:49):
was we have to imagine it first before it comes
to be, and what happens when social imaginary is shut down?
And in this we were looking at the force does
that do that? What shuts down the human imagination that
puts us in these little boxes and these structures that
were not allowed to flourish and be. So I went

(08:12):
with that idea that I want to talk to the
people there about their dreams. How is it impacting their
dreams this existential prediction of them or human beings not
being you know, going away? And so my first trip
I did, I stayed. I wanted to stay with in
a home, you know, in a village, not in Maine,

(08:35):
eye in town, you know, this center that you ultimately
do see in that film. And to Keenness, who became
my main collaborator now as a dear, dear friend met
me when I arrived and basically never left my side.
And this journey takes you know, the film took twelve years.

(08:56):
It started in twenty thirteen, was the first and my
touch down there, And so yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Twelve years. What type of discipline is needed to take
that long to stick to it?

Speaker 1 (09:11):
I mean, I think I didn't have the end necessarily
in mind that whole time, but what I was experiencing
on that journey was so profound and ultimately transformative that
even if I didn't have a film at the end,
it was such a gift and so and I have

(09:33):
such deep rooted love and connections with them, with Taquinas
and her entire family, I feel so grateful that they
open up their hearts and let me sit beside them
and just be with them and listen. And they shared

(09:53):
so much wisdom. I felt a lot of grief and
what I observed about you know, I was at one
point discovering the beauty of this culture and these people
that I'd never heard about, and realizing the precarity of
their existence. So it was beautiful and it was shirt

(10:14):
wrenching experience. And I mean, this has come up in
some of the Q and a's I've had, and on
this tour, you know, people ask me in this moment
about like grief. I had a lot of grief, and
I had to pause, you know, and not create, but
sit with a grief, a grief of the complicity that

(10:36):
I have in this situation there right with our Western
industrial ways that I was born here, and I make
sense of that. How do I participate? How do I
mitigate this? How can I make different choices? You know,
my whole Western post Enlightenment structure of how I see
things that I didn't even realize, you know, kind of

(10:58):
how to fall away. I did a lot of reading
and seeking, and so during those twelve years it was
absolutely necessary. Did it take that long for me to
come out with this film? In this moment, we did
have three years of COVID though, so the borders were

(11:20):
shut in Kitdabas for three full years. They did not
have COVID until the very end, when a plane of
missionaries came and brought it. But at that point they
were more prepared for it, so that man I was
working remotely with my collaborators at that point.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
And if you weren't born in the West. How do
you think you coped with.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Grief if I wasn't born in the West.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yes, if he wasn't, I mean.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Probably much the same way I feel like I. This
project brought me in touch with a lot of writers,
cosmologists like Swim and Thomas Berry, who wrote the Universe Story.
I have a mentor, Joanna Macy, who just passed recently.

(12:08):
She wrote She wrote a book as well. She wrote
a book called The Audacity of Hope, The World Is Lover.
She also wrote another book, The World Is Lover. So
I was looking and seeking ways to understand our connection

(12:29):
to the greater forces that brought the planet the cosmos
into being, and through that I touched on something that
was divine or mysterious that I think really all scientists have,
you know, like these two things are not disconnected. I
just played it. We just played the film that would Hole,

(12:50):
and we were part of the science and Film initiative there.
And I showed this film at the Oceanographic Institute, and
it was in a lot of conversation with scientists, microbiologists,
and you know, I wouldn't think they would have interest
in my film because my film's very sensuous, expressive, journey

(13:13):
of this world, and it's not a lot of data
and facts, but in fact they expressed that the impulse
and the feelings is much what drives them to do science.
So I think it might be the same, you know.
I mean my ultimately, where I went to find hope

(13:35):
and solace kind of existed at the edge of what
we understand as human beings. And somehow for me, I
find hope at what I don't understand, a mystery impossibility,
at the edge of what we figured out, you know,

(13:56):
and that gives me comfort in some ways. And also
this idea that there's great unfolding that happened right like
thirteen point eight billion years ago, and then it's going
to continue, and we're a part of that unfolding, and
we're a tiny facet in this moment I'm unfolding. And
if we can tap in and see that in these cycles,

(14:17):
that there's great beauty and we can feel a deep connection. No,
and so my connection what I felt, the connection I
felt there with that place in all the sensuous ways,
and you see it in my cinematography because that was

(14:38):
how I share it. I'm not speaking in the film,
but it's my frame that's put me in touch. I
think with this mystery Beyond is how could I feel
that so intimately going to this place halfway around the
world if we didn't have that deep wisdom and understanding

(14:59):
in each of us, and as it brought me such
such comfort, you know. And I think as I've traveled
with this and talked to people, the message in this
film or is not go to kid abous, but it's
to find your home and those living systems and deeper

(15:20):
ways of communing with the home and ground beneath your
feet and all the processes that are happening that I
think modern Western life doesn't really allow us to find
the joy and then ultimately reciprocity in those processes, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
And Oceana reveals the effects of both climate change and
colonial legacies or challenges or insights from bringing these threads
together in one cinematic piece.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh well, it's interesting because I didn't know all these
threads are coins to be brought together. But because it's
such a human story and I sat beside her, she
would say one thing and then it would lead to
another story and another history and another thread. And so

(16:13):
that's another part of this journey and why it took
so long was because to really get the fullness, we
need to have this look, this deeper look, over time.
And that was challenging because that's not the way film
and narratives are supposed to take place in this market,

(16:33):
right And I was told, we need one thing and
a through line of repulsive narrative forward, and you can't
weave this and this together. And you know, I recently,
not that long ago, when I was touring with a
filmmaker friend of mine, we were having these deep conversations
on narrative and narrative structure and this three X structure

(16:55):
and always building to a conflict in a crisis and
having a hero at the end save us does not
follow that at all. And she pointed me to this
essay by Ursula LeGuin called the Carrier Basket of Fiction,
and Ursula Gwin's parents were anthropologists, and in this essay

(17:18):
it's kind of tongue in cheek, but she basically takes
this very issue on about narrative and structure and ties
it back to early early storytelling, early human storytelling that
when we developed weapons and we went out and we
killed and hunted, that they would come back with those stories,

(17:39):
and they were much more exciting than the carrier basket,
which she suggests in this essay is the first important
tool of evolution, because when you go out and you're
collecting wild oats or what have you, you're only able to
eat as many as you can eat and maybe feed
your child, but you need as to carry it. And

(18:01):
this was huge, she said. And so you would fill
this up, and you might have it for breakfast in
the morning, and you might share it. And she describes
this carrier bastic of tending and foraging and coming back
with lots of different things as a way as a
modality of storytelling. And so I think that in terms

(18:24):
of these two different structures, mine is much more the
carrier basket. I collected all these things, you know, I listened,
I sat beside, I observed over a longer period of time,
and I wove it into more this reflective, slow unfolding
narrative that doesn't answer questions, but maybe asks of us

(18:50):
to think and reflect. So the challenge is the market
place for this kind of film. You know, it's not
the streamers, and you know they don't see this. They
don't The time it took is like outlandish right, I'm
sure you know in terms of film, and I never
go in and say it's going to take me twelve years.

(19:13):
But then the structure, you know, whereas the building crisis
and this this con so this takes a turn away
from that. But I have to share early on in
my film process, I did reach out to scientists and
I came in touch with a professor Karat Frabacco, who

(19:35):
wrote her thesis on an idea at the time that
was emerging called wishful sinking, which was that she looked
at these low lying populations and how they were being
used in a way environmentalists were wanting them to go
away to prove their point that the science was real.
And so I also held that in me from a

(19:57):
very early time, this idea that we don't want to
use and position and put these people in these crisis
narratives as victims on the verge because it's disempowering to
them and it also doesn't honor their indigenous wisdom that
we can actually learn from in this very moment, with

(20:20):
this crisis that were all faced with on.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
The planet, and given your experience with on fertile ground,
how did the cross cultural dynamics or gender power and
mduous knowledge playing to the development and production of Oceania.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, that I was invited. The State Department had a
conference on climate and storytelling, and I was invited. But
it was in Silicon Valley at a big corporate hotel,
and so I was there with some people and thought,
and there are power points, and we thought, this is
missing a huge swatch of wisdom in this contest. So

(20:59):
we proposed, we got a small grant. We proposed to
take five Western women working around issues of climate and
five Indigenous women and bring them together. But we went
somewhere else. We went to north of the Bay Area,

(21:21):
and it happened to be this wasn't by choice on
a retreat center, but it was very close to where
the gold Rush had happen. And I didn't realize this
at the time, And so then we did. We invited
people to attend, and they applied, and we brought together,
you know, ten women, five of them Native American and

(21:43):
five of them Western. And I had a woman who
co organized this with me, and I was in charge
of gathering Indigenous women. And you know, I didn't put
all these pieces together at the moment, but when we
were all. What I realized had happened unbeknownst to me
was the site of this retreat, which I found because

(22:10):
the woman that owned it was a big had met
with Thomas Barry, who wrote Dreaming of the Earth and
was a co writer of the Universe story with Ryan Swim.
But I didn't really know a lot about that site
other than it was in former Gold Country gold rush country,
that the indigenous women that were invited were part of
an unrecognized tribe, the Nissanon tribe, and that this retreat

(22:34):
that was happening where we were bringing together is ten
women for three days were on the site of a
burial ground of the Nissanon tribe that had been danned
and covered up with a lake, and it was a
big wound for them. So when we had two cousins
from the Nissanon tribe of the five that I had

(22:55):
brought together and they landed on this very site, it's
like wow. It was infused was so much those three days.
So what happened those three days was incredible. There was
a lot of sharing, as you can imagine. We had fires,

(23:16):
we had sharing stories and histories, a lot of tears,
a lot of pain came out and it was all
held because we were all there together away from our
daily lives, and we had meals, every single meal together
for three days, and I think at the end of

(23:37):
that there was like a healing that happened, you know,
and other things as well. I don't know if you
want me to continue, but it was incredible. It was incredible.
I mean, you know the woman Shelley, who's incredible. I've
seen her in other films now, but the last day

(23:59):
of the tree, she was staying at home because she
lived close by, and she said, you know, I just
want to share with you that I had this dream
last night that my ancestors were dancing below us. It
was so visual, like they feel the healing. And she
said to me, I saw them put of shirts on

(24:25):
the woman who owned the retreat center. So she was
given this land that was taken through force. They were
her ancestors, were people that came for the gold Rush,
and so that final meeting she didn't know about this
vision that Shelley had. She offered them complete access to
come whenever they wanted. So there was like a huge

(24:48):
healing like spiritually with these women, but also a real
step towards granting them access to this ancestral burial ground
that had been taken by the owner of this place
ancestors years before. So it was I mean, I guess
it taught me in that process because I actually wanted

(25:09):
to have the retreat somewhere else that I needed to
follow wherever the path was, and I use it like
a river flowing. I needed to just be open to
whatever was moving towards a direction, even if I didn't
have like all the answers or understanding. And that's what
I've tried to do with Oceania. You know, I wanted

(25:31):
to finish this film years earlier, but it's released now,
and I feel like that was meant to be. Was
it meant to be released years earlier?

Speaker 2 (25:43):
It's released now? In your film's screen across venues from
Sigmund Freud Museum to Cinema Politica and CBC. Had you
tidle your distribution strategy to reach both policy makers and
grassroots audiences?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Oh well, in this moment, I think everything is changing.
I'm about to teach a class on nonfiction pre production
and that's like the first paragraphs that I have always
to do this, Like how do we prepare for anything

(26:18):
right at a moment when a lot of the structures
that support have been pulled away. But at this moment,
it's more important than ever to have independent voices and perspectives,
and I think it gives us new opportunities, these challenges
to rethink things. And so what I'm thinking about is

(26:41):
in terms of I think Oceania looks at relational ecology
like we're in relationship with one another and the entirety
of this planet. And I'm going to teach this class
with that very question, how do we create relationships, ecologies,
relationship to get stories out that matter. So I don't

(27:04):
have all the answers because I'm midway through my festival run,
but I can tell you as I've traveled with this
film around the world, and the other places you've mentioned
were in earlier works, not with Oceania. We premiered, We premiered,
We had our world premier at Mill Valley here in
the Bay Area, and then went to the East coast

(27:25):
to Woodstock, and then we played, and then we've been
out internationally. So I'm doing the festival circuit, but a
lot of these festivals are their only ecollegies outside of
the mainstream and they have connections to other communities, so
they're looking at the issues of climate or social issues,

(27:47):
you know. I was just in New Zealand at a
festival where the film played both the North and South Island.
And now we have other screenings that are going to
be happening in museums that have shows on the Cadavas culture.
So I feel like I don't have that master plan.

(28:08):
But what I am doing is little by little, as
I journey with this film is building relationships, and as
those relationships, you know, evolve, I'm meeting other people, and
I feel like the ecology of this journey is expanding,

(28:29):
you know, by almost like little seeds are planted around
the world. We're about to play Rio and Brazil. There's
it's going to play in Rio, and all of those
audiences are going to see this film for free because
they have a grant, you know. So that's an ecology there.
And it's going to be playing the schools. You know,
it played at woods Hole and you had all the

(28:51):
science initiative around it and all the conversations around science,
and that conversation emerging. So I feel like that that's
the way I'm imagining it now. I'm also imagining education
is going to be huge for this film, and I'm
meeting with some educational distributors next week because I really

(29:12):
think that it could thrive in university, college, and even
high school settings where the students have time and they
have the space to imagine new ways forward the next generation.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yep, from what I saw, I straight away I thought
about educational platforms for the documentary and how does it
work approaching these platforms for those of us who haven't
had much distribution.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well, like that's everything's changing in that realm as well.
But the ecology of this film, because I've had a
lot of screenings now, I had an educational distributor based
in the Pacific Northwest that were former filmmakers and saw
the education market is hugely important, so they contacted me.
So I haven't met with them yet, meeting this coming Wednesday.

(30:04):
And they also do what's called impact funding, and they
do grants for impact, so you know, because you need
time and you need resources to get a film out
and have to be really impactful. And I feel like
I have like rode this very tiny canoe with incredible

(30:26):
people that have poured so much love into this film
and I'm just waiting for the next person to get
on our canoe and can see, you know, continue rowing it.
And they have the relationships with Canopy and all those
other streamers as well, as they do not take the
rights for the theatrical or the festival or the broadcast.

(30:49):
So it would just be this particular distributor just takes
the worldwide educational rights and helps and then offers funding
for impact as well, and then these one off screenings.
And that's all I know at this point. But I
also know there's other collectives, like there's a New Day
Collective here where people work as a collective and they

(31:10):
have a catalog that goes out and they're very respected.
I was contacted by another female women's film collective. They're
banding together. So I think that we are trying to
reimagine new ways to get important stories out because it's

(31:31):
when you get the response. We want a propulsive, action
forward narrative for every single story. You can imagine what
we get. I mean, there's not a streamer or a
distributor that's like mainstream blockbuster that doesn't have that as
their mandate, and so we need something else. I think

(31:53):
if we're really going to have stories that allow people
in this moment to reflect and ask deeper questions.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Ocean sparks in terms of reframing climate justice, especially in
how Western audiences engage with specific and its people the.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Idea that it's about climate, right, and then you brought
up the colonizing effects that they've had, all the impacts
that they've had. Because the story looks at the missionary,
and it looks at the British, and then it looks
at the climate change that's all impacting them, I think
that it shows that there's no way to pull apart

(32:33):
those issues. I also think another thing that it does
is reframe our or question are what often happens in
the West to them, in fact, is like we go
there and we say we know the problem and we
have the answer, and here it is, and it's not

(32:55):
that easy. Their perspective is much longer than ours of
that replace And one of the things I think the
film does is shows that the love that they have
for place and the relationship is one of reciprocity, but
also it's identity. They identify with that place as part

(33:17):
of their body and their ancestral legacy, and so they
don't look at it as property like we do so
in terms of climate justice, if you're to say, oh,
we're just going to give you another piece of property
somewhere else and call it yours, that doesn't That doesn't work.

(33:39):
You know, that's that's not and in fact, that mindset
doesn't serve us either, does it, Because so I think
that's one of the main things I didn't expect. But
it's like, climate justice is not that easy in terms
of fixes unless we change and reframe our relationship to

(34:01):
our place. If we change that and we see that
we're relationship to our place, will make better choices, but
will also understand their position and the solutions will be different,
like they have soft solutions versus hard solutions, which will
allow them to stay in that very place for longer

(34:22):
if they're able to live sustainably in the ways that
their ancestors have done as Micronesians for thousands of years.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
And that's a very deep answer. I understand why you
said it won't work for us as well as for them,
but can you explain exactly why it won't work for us?

Speaker 1 (34:43):
I feel like if we don't look and we including myself,
at this rift that's happened between our place and us.
If we don't see the connection, we are part of
this place and everything we do to this place is

(35:05):
part of our body. You know, I just sat on
a panel and woods Hole and the other panelists. You know,
as a filmmaker who broke the story of all these
five hundred thousand barrels of DDT being dumped out of
sight into our Pacific Ocean in the nineteen seventies, My

(35:28):
story is a reflection on why was DDD manufactured in
the first place. If we had had this idea that
this planet is our body and if we put it
out there, it's coming back to us in our bodies,
like literally and figuratively. And then when we figured out
it was dangerous, why would we think we could dump

(35:51):
it into our oceans? You know, we were sitting up
there in the same panel and the very you know,
my film that brings to light this idea, you know,
vis a vis the stories of Taquinas and her son
and their way of looking at those islands as an
extension of themselves, something that they they care for as

(36:15):
a loved one. And next to me is you know,
the filmmaker and journalists from the La Times that broke
the story of five hundred thousand barrels of DDT being
dumped off the coast of southern California in the seventies,
which they recently found, and it's in all of our

(36:36):
marine life they've been testing, all the way up to
the condor and now through the food chain and in us,
you know, and in the body of those animals. And
you know, that's the deeper question. I mean, my my
film uses allegorically but also in a very real way
the containership as a metaphor, you know, a sine symbol

(37:01):
of the logistics industry. But it's also moving so quickly
that these ancient creatures, the whales, are getting hit. We're
on this kind of collision course, and I think slowing
down reflecting on our place and what we're doing to

(37:26):
our place when we're not feeling it, when we don't
love it, when we don't treat it as a loved
one and see it as an extension of our body.
I sort of feel like these things will keep happening
in different ways. These things will keep happening because we're

(37:47):
trying to control and manage, and we're looking at things
as isolated things like the DDT was to eradicate pests,
you know. But really that was such a foolish notion
because that's part of an ecology, you know, and so
one fix. If we come up with another fix, but

(38:11):
we have the wrong framework to begin with, I feel
like we'll just keep doing damage and damaging ourselves ultimately,
you know. And I think for my film, it's not
giving all the answers to all those questions. There are
other films that do that, and I think all these

(38:33):
films and all these stories should be out there. But
I think in Oceania it's an invitation, cinematic invitation to
remember the beauty and miracle of this place that allows
this kind of life to exist because it's miraculous. And

(38:53):
then it's also an invitation to realize the precarity know
of life that we have. And I feel like that's
a really good starting place for other conversations to emerge.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Your work constantly connects art, dreaming, and storytelling as tools
for social revolution. How do you envision your next projects
building on Oceania in terms of creative practice and social engagement?

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Wow, that's a big question in my social imaginery of
my practice. I mean, right, how I imagine it's I feel
like I am now on a boat and I'm riding
a current of this project, and I'm willing to go

(39:46):
where it takes me. And I don't know. I don't
have that answer, except I think it's.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Going to be through relationships, and relationships build on mutuality
and respect, with space for deeper conversations and questioning and
not assuming and no assumptions right of what it's going
to be or what it's going to look like. Ultimately,

(40:17):
I think I have to be open to the possibility
that I don't know, and that it will become illuminated
for me as this continues. I think that I've been
contacted by a lot of different festivals that I wouldn't
naturally expect, like one is on food systems and sustainability,

(40:38):
you know, And so I think that the heart of
this touches on a lot of issues of our time,
and for me, that's I want to be able to
contribute in the way that I can that's most helpful.

(41:01):
I do love cinema, and my language is the language
of the camera because I shoot my own work most
of it, and so and I love using light and composition,
and I think there's something magical about how light carries

(41:24):
an image of the world with it. And I love poetry,
and poetry is like my prayer. Like I woke up
this morning and opened up my little book of Roomy
and then I read something from Mary Oliver So the
poetics of language and the nuance of that in between
questioning and then the language of cinema. I get deep

(41:48):
joy from that, and I feel like people understand that
when I've realized they read that resonates with them. So
I hope that the next project allows me to expres
us in that way. But I'm also open to however
this unfolds, and whatever we need and whatever opportunities are

(42:10):
brought to me to best contribute, you know, because I mean.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
I have a child and I think about that, you know.
I think about his future and what legacy is he
being left with as we look forward, and I think
we need thousands and thousands of people to show up
in a multitude of ways.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Not wrong, not wrong at all. And as someone living
on indicuous lands in California, how is your proximity to
local ecological and cultural histories informed of a global storytelling lens?

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah? I so I told you I was part of
that show. It was as f camera to work called
Traces of Light on the Thin film of Longing and
I it was three cities that were represented. It was
Jim Cohen who did this film Chain from New York.
Jenny Olsen who was a Bay Area filmmaker who did

(43:16):
this film called The Joy of Life that was about
the Golden Gate Bridge. And in my film which was
called Islands from la And when I came up here
and I reflected on islands and that ecology in that city,
and I left and relocated here when I had a child,

(43:40):
and well, I went to Vienna first and then I came.
I moved back here and I ended up getting a
cottage on the edge of open space preserve former land
of the kost Me walks. We had a river, the
Lagunita Stream, which brought Coho back to Bond and a

(44:02):
lot of it was preserved. Developers were kept out just
by miraculous coming together of various communities that we have
the Golden Gate natural recreation area, butted up with the
we're in Agricultural Land Trust Buttress with Point Raised National Seashore.
So I sort of loved the idea of that, but

(44:24):
living around That made me very, very very aware. And
then I had a child who was being raised and
I was kind of being educated with him along the
way because I was very active in his education. He's
now in college and I learned, you know. And so
that very very much was present just by virtual being
close proximity with these systems that hadn't been paved over,

(44:47):
you know. So that was revelatory for me and definitely
impacted me when I went to cure Boss and then
when I return, I was actually connecting these two places.
I was also I was given a I was I
was a resident artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

(45:11):
I don't know if you know where that is. That's
that's just over the Golden Gate Bridge. It's across from
the Marine Mammal Center, which is a huge marine mammal hospital.
And I had a studio that was looking out over
a Nike missile site. It's a former base army base.
But my site was pointed oriented, you know, out over

(45:34):
the North Pacific shore. So I was thinking about the
relationship between the North Pacific and then I went to
the South Pacific. And this was part of the weave
of my my creative imaginal realm for the years that
this film was you know, in development. Today, I'm part

(45:59):
of a group called by Regional Explorers Club. If you
go out and we do workshops and forage. We forage,
you know, sustainably, and we do what's called honorable harvest.
I haven't been as active as I'd like to be
because I've been traveling. But we started this to learn

(46:19):
more about our bioregion here and all the gifts that
it has to offer. And so I don't know as
much as I want to know. So in this when
you go to a day long here, they like the
last thing I did. We went and harvested muscles and
learned about that process, and we harvested seaweed and they
were prepared in this beautiful meal on the beach, and

(46:43):
we learn and we learned how to do it safely
and sustainably. You know what to leave, what to take,
when to do it. And so that's a little bit
about what I've been doing in my in my place
here because I think the message, you know, Sheiannia isn't
to go there. It's to find what you have, the

(47:05):
ground underneath your feet, and how you can honor that
and not only that, but like spiritually connect with that
place and the rhythms of it, because I feel more
enriched and alive and so much more joy for understanding
all that life that's shimmering and vibrating around.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Me, you know, completely understanding that. And I hope that
I think you said muscles. I hope that they were
nice and tasty.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
They were very tasty.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Bald and black, Abel Natalie, thanks so much for coming
on the podcast. I really appreciate learning about your journey
and the film and the work that you do. Great stuff.
I hope if it hasn't already happened, but one day
you can come to London and I'd love to watch
the screening of the film for certain, I would love that.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Thank you so much, Damien for this. This was really
really beautiful length that I feel like a lot was
explored and I was able to do that with you,
So thank you for this and making it possible.

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Ep 257: The Intersection of Anthropology and Cinema: Natalie Zimmerman’s Approach

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