The Film
A wilderness, sculpted by fire, stands defiant of the encroaching megalopolis surrounding it. Once deemed inhospitable, the Pinelands became home to many. Through a veil of folklore and myth, their sense of identity is inexorably linked to the diminishing island of darkness in a sea of traffic and lights within the most densely populated state in the nation - New Jersey.
The Pine Barrens film is an epic tone-poem, where raging forest fires and crackling campfires generate rebirth of the physical ecology and the identity of the land and its inhabitants. It is a celebration of nature and a portrait of a particular place, but one that casts doubt on its know-ability and our ability to discern reality from superstition. The Pine Barrens explores the symbiotic yet sometimes destructive relationship between man and nature. Through moments with individuals spanning several years, it reveals the influence of place on identity during a period of gradual loss of both a way of life and the environment that gave birth to it.
Since 2012, short, evolving work-in-progress versions of The Pine Barrens have been screened with a live score by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra, making the project unfixed and semi-improvised, emphasizing the experience of our changing relationship to place and the natural world over time.