Barbed Wire Land

"Barbed Wire Land" works in the tradition of Chris Marker's essay films—Sans Soleil, La Jetée—where archival footage functions not as illustration but as primary text to be read against itself. The editing accumulates meaning through juxtaposition rather than exposition, or as Marker described it, "the way Memory works, not the way it's supposed to work," trusting images to resonate across layers of place, technology, and history. "Barbed Wire Land" shares Marker's suspicion of official narratives, assembling its archival fragments into a counter-history that reveals what the triumphalist story of Western expansion prefers to leave out of frame.

The Cadence Video Poetry Film Festival hosts noted: "This smart, well-researched piece starts with a seemingly small footnote in the history of Western expansion – the invention of the barbed-wire fence – and finds within it a powerful metaphor for the entire American way of seeing and being in the world. The filmmaker's multilayered story of place, people, technology, and ideology is brought home by fantastic archival footage, strong and well-paced editing, and a clear-eyed sense of what the country they call BARBED WIRE LAND, at its core, is all about."

Premiered in North America at the Cadence Video Poetry Festival (virtually) hosted by the NW Film Forum in 2021 and won an honorable mention.

Premiered in the UK at the Global Lift-Off First-Time Sessions Vol. 7 at Pinewood Studios.

Finalist for the Best Experimental Micro Film at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival in the Winter of 2022.

Screened at the Deep Focus Film Festival, on WēVē TV, and at locally hosted Climate Grief Ceremonies that were fundraisers to support the Wetsuweten Water Protectors.