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This Fil nn is Going to Be About a Sauna

Set amidst the largest contiguous protected wilderness in the world, on the campus at Hobbit Hole at the Tidelines Institute, follow the story of a community building endeavor using more traditional and primitive building techniques to build a floating sauna made to last for generations to come.

  • Taliesin Black-Brown
    Director
    Safe Enough (2023), Sauna Channel, Iam the nature (2023), The Hour After Westerly (2019)
  • Taliesin Black-Brown
    Producer
    Safe Enough (2023), Sauna Channel, Iam the nature (2023), The Hour After Westerly (2019)
  • Greg M Moga III
    Executive Producer
    The End (2024), Arthur (2011), Safe Enough (2023), The Artist Toolbox (2011)
  • Ben Cowan
    Cinematographer
    Safe Enough (2023), Sauna Channel, The Hour After Westerly (2019)
  • Ben Kaplan
    Editor
    Sauna Channel, Iam the nature (2023) Safe Enough (2023)
  • Calvin Hunting Pia
    Sound Mix
    Sophie Jones (2020), Neurotica. (2019), The Privates (2017), 16th Street (2008)
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Web / New Media
  • Genres:
    Nature, Culture, Lifestyle
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 59 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Nowness
    worldwide
    January 15, 2024
    World Premiere
Director Biography - Taliesin Black-Brown

Taliesin Black-Brown was born underwater in a barn in Vermont to a performance artist and a compost engineer. Nature, freedom and art shaped his early life. Teenage years were marked by a long slow dance with bone cancer, which gifted him with a hard look at suffering and death as much as aliveness and vitality. During chapters of recovery and immobility Black-Brown took to flying drones, a means to re-experience the world in motion. Drone footage became films, films became stories and healing took flight. He is the founder of Olympic Imagery, where 10% of proceeds are donated to pediatric cancer research. As a filmmaker, Taliesin is interested in exploring themes of truth, beauty, vulnerability and power. Black-Brown’s short film debut, Safe Enough, is currently being showcased in festivals such as the Anchorage Film Festival, where it won the Audience Prize. He is the co-director of You Can't Dam Your Way to Paradise (Mountainfilm 2019) and director of I am the nature (Mountainfilm 2024).

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Director Statement

“The Hobbit Hole offered a vantage from which to see the individualistic, human-centric culture I live in. This story of coming together is a remembrance of community – a community that includes many generations and the more-than-human world, strengthened by the sweat of building and using a sauna.” - Taliesin Black-Brown

Located on the Inian Islands in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness, The Hobbit Hole is an environmental field school set against the largest protected area on the planet. As part of the Tidelines Institute, the community that converges here seeks to combat the climate crisis through education and collective efforts, coming together by sharing responsibilities and knowledge under the influence of the rich ecosystem that surrounds them.

This Fil nn Is Going To Be About A Sauna follows the community at The Hobbit Hole as people from throughout Alaska gather to build an on-site sauna. Together creating something more enduring than a structure, the film celebrates sauna culture as a means of strengthening community, exploring the synergy between the forces and resources of the natural landscape, and those who seek to maintain it and learn from it.

Travelling the Alaskan coastline and the most snow-covered mountain range on earth by seaplane, the crew landed at The Hobbit Hole as the build commenced. As participants collaborate to create something intended to be used by hundreds of people they would never meet, the film hones in on the architecture of community and the shared philosophy that underlies it. An extension of the sauna itself, I seek to educate and immerse viewers in this singular experience, where maintaining one foot in the old and one in the new can initiate powerful change.