Sanctuary Station (2024)

• 81%
• 2024
• Documentary
• Brigid McCaffrey

Sanctuary Station traces a series of encounters with women and youth who have cultivated intrinsic attachments to the various life forms inhabiting the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Oscillations between the desire for solitude and the need for collaboration recur through an album-like progression of personal stories and actions. These encounters are framed through the poems of Mary Norbert Korte (1934-2022), an ex-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 movements, collective and personal rites of mourning, and intimate everyday routines evoke cycles of life unfolding within this intricately interwoven environment.