Geographies of Solitude wins Best Canadian Feature Documentary
Geographies of Solitude film won the Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs for its experimental portrait of researcher Zoe Lucas and her work on Sable Island.
The film is directed by Jacquelyn Mills and produced by Mills and Rosalie Chicoine Perreault. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000, sponsored by Telefilm and the Documentary Organization of Canada.
- Hot Docs Winner – Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award
- Hot Docs Winner – The Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award
Geographies of Solitude is a film about an environmentalist (Zoe Lucas) living on Nova Scotia's Sable Island has won top Canadian honours at this year's Hot Docs Film Festival 2022.
Her Sable Island film, "Geographies of Solitude," chronicles the life's work of environmentalist Zoe Lucas, the only full-time inhabitant on Sable Island.
Visual and Aural Storytelling Film
The Sundance film Canada is directed by Jacquelyn Mills and produced by Mills and Rosalie Chicoine Perreault. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000, sponsored by Telefilm and the Documentary Organization of Canada.
The jury praised this experimental documentary film Geographies of Solitude for “its deft ability to reveal the complex intersections between the natural world and humanity’s excesses on a singular isolated island through strongly crafted and arresting visual and aural storytelling.” Mills also won the Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award, which honours an artist presenting their first or second feature at the festival. The award carries a cash prize of $3,000, sponsored by the Glick family.
Jacquelyn Mills Filmmaker
Jacquelyn Mills’ GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE, the Atlantic Canada filmmaker offers us an immersion into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, an environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this remote, sliver of land off the coast of Canada where she spends her life collecting, cleaning, and documenting marine litter that washes up on the islands’ shore.
This Environmental Documentary Canada was shot on 16mm, the film often incorporates eco-friendly filmmaking techniques to capture, in beautiful effect, Mills' encounters with Zoe Lucas and the Island. In this sense, Zoe Lucas and Sable Island are not “subjects” of the film, but collaborators and co-creators.
We spoke with Jacquelyn Mills to learn more about her intuitive approach in making this film and the different ways she worked with her surroundings - including eco-friendly hand processing techniques like using plant emulsion, exposing parts of the film in moonlight and starlight, and placing specimens from Sable Island on film stock.
Towards the end of the episode, we speak briefly about her previous film, IN THE WAVES, a touching portrait of the director's grandmother as she grieves the loss of a sister available to stream on Vimeo.
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