GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE

Zoe Lucas was an art student when she first hitched a ride with a journalist to isolated Sable Island, a crescent of sand and grasses off the coast of Nova Scotia, in 1971. Later she returned as a volunteer with a seal research project and never left, devoting her life to recording data on the island’s 500 wild horses, shifting sands and creeping scourge of microplastics in the soil and animal dung she analyses. Artist Jacqueline Mills uses special microphones to amplify the musical clatter of insects’ feet, developing a musical score of the island’s sounds while filming the island and its sole resident with film developed with naturally made emulsion; like Lucas, she treads lightly here. Lucas herself is a witty guide, her observations an essential bridge to our understanding of her work, but the film’s core subject is the poetry of this wonderful, windswept place.