Feet in Water, Head on Fire

Synopsis

Along the San Andreas fault line in Southern California, Indigenous palm trees and date palms imported from the Middle East flourish. The people who tend to them reflect a landscape of frictions and affections shaped over generations by agriculture, luxury real estate, and border politics. Like the infinity storytelling of The 1001 Nights, stories fold into dreams and back into stories, a constellation of voices settle over mountains and into the earth. Intertwining color 16mm with textural black and white film hand processed with the dates leftover from harvest and plants native to the valley Feet in Water, Head on Fire is a sensory, polyvocal evocation of place.

Director Biography

Terra Long is a filmmaker whose work circles cultural, personal, and natural histories embedded within landscape. Her practice is collaborative, with a commitment to deep listening and material explorations of celluloid. Her films have screened at venues around the world. She has also edited numerous films.