Lake Effect - The Slow Death of Great Salt Lake

Larry Ruiz is a nonprofit filmmaker living in Durango, Colorado, creating unique, timely, and engaging films and documentaries to show how important the ancient civilizations and their modern descendants of the southwestern United States are, and that it is still possible to protect what little of this early culture is left.

In 2012, Larry Ruiz directed and produced his debut film, Death of Place. The core message of the film was the importance of individual responsibility and stewardship of archaeologically significant sites. Later, in December 2012, Ruiz met Davd Valentine who has worked as principle cinematographer and co-producer with Larry on every subsequent film since that year.

Waking the Mammoth premiered in 2014 and was Larry Ruiz’s second directorial work. Filming the winter solstice burning of a wooden mammoth built in Bluff, Utah, by local artist Joe Pachak and other community members, this ritual was woven into the intricate fabric of significant archaeological discoveries in the region dating back as far as 13,000 years. The film was awarded Best in Show, Gold Award, and Best Documentary at the Colorado Trindie Film Festival. At the Depth of Field Independent Film Festival, Waking the Mammoth received the Merit Award for Outstanding Cinematography.

In 2017, Ruiz directed, co-produced, and edited 23 documentaries for the preservation series, The Greater Chaco Landscape, working closely with Drs. Steve Lekson, Ruth Van Dyke, Carrie Heitman, Diné, (Navajo), and Acoma Pueblo Chaco scholars, along with the National Park Service.

In 2018, Ruiz co-produced and edited a short film with Solstice Project founder Anna Sofaer titled, A Sacred Line-scape Unites the Four Corners.

In March of 2019, Ruiz worked with the National Geographic Network in Chaco Canyon on the world premiere of the National Geographic Channel television show titled, Chasing the Solstice. Ruiz’s award-winning time-lapse was featured on the Chaco Canyon segment of that program supporting Anna Sofaer’s interview and discoveries.

Early in 2019, Cloudy Ridge Productions completed the two-time, award-winning feature-length Navajo weaving film titled, Spider Woman’s Web. At the Durango International Film Festival, the film was awarded the Best Native Cinema Award. At the Nederland International Film Festival, we received the Best Film Editing Award.

In August of 2019, Ruiz was again asked to direct, co-produce, and edit the second part of the Greater Chaco Landscape-Indigenous Perspectives, featuring Hopi and Zuni interviews in Chaco Canyon. Larry edited, directed, and co-produced an additional five documentaries from this effort that were completed in early 2020. As a result of this collaborative filming effort, a documentary short featuring the Hopi Tribe titled, Yupkӧyvi-The Place Beyond the Horizon, was edited for film festivals and is gaining popularity by being accepted into the NativeSkins Festival in Los Angeles, The American Indian Festival in San Francisco, The Santa Fe Film Festival, and The Durango Independent Film Festival, and other potential festivals across the continent.

Starting in 2016, and continuing to present, Cloudy Ridge Productions has been working on a series of vignettes titled The Languages of the Landscape. Each film addresses a specific regional archaeological preservation issue across the Four Corners area of the Southwestern United States.

In the fall of 2021, Larry Ruiz was commissioned by the Chicago Field Museum to edit a short film piece to be used as a visual introduction to the museum’s new permanent exhibit hall, Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. From the Museums website: “Over four years in the making, the groundbreaking exhibition was created with the guidance of an advisory council of 11 Native American scholars and museum professionals, and in partnership with 130 collaborators representing over 105 Tribes.”

Ruiz collaborated with the Chicago Field Museums staff and Native Peoples to help bring a visualization that supports the preservation of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

Since 2021 Ruiz Cloudy Ridge Productions has been working on the continuing series titled “Human Population Overshoot and Collapse”. The premiere film was screened at the Durango Independent Film Festival in 2021. Additionally, Cloudy Ridge has produced nineteen short film vignettes featured on our YouTube channel as a special series concerning historical, climatic and environmental issues in Chaco Canyon. Please see: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCsrn0OXyjaVEgBSJWTecug_Vazk1T78U&si=GCWvyXMRRBA4t_99