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Day Island
Short Documentary (WIP)
dir. Sam Wolff
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My aunt, Janna, lives on a small stretch of road that juts into the Puget Sound. It is where she has spent her entire life. But as coastal flooding intensifies, her home – and her connection to the past – is becoming increasingly difficult to hold on to. Ultimately, Day Island is a story about place and displacement.
I am producing, directing, and shooting Day Island, and it is currently in production.
When Janna and I first discussed the project – over breakfast, in Norway – I imagined a story that foregrounded the climate crisis. It wasn’t until we were well into filming that I began to view the film in a more introspective light. There’s a weirdness to environmental displacement; maybe it’s the awkward inevitability of change, or the feeling of watching a home disappear in slow motion. Certain emotions are hard to place. I have realized that the communities at the frontlines of climate change are navigating a reality that is, among other things, very strange.
In many of our conversations, Janna and I have found ourselves reminiscing about a place that still exists. Perhaps this is where some of the weirdness comes from.
We have talked about what it is that Janna loves about Day Island, and what she will miss. We have asked each other what we will remember most when it is all gone. And what we will likely forget, too. In the face of change, you get a strong sense of the parts of yourself that you hold dear.
Among those things that Janna holds on to is our shared history. Five generations ago, our family emigrated to Day Island from Norway. At the time, it was little more than a few homes stretched across the sand spit. My family chose to stay because the mountains across the water reminded them of their coastal villages back home.
Land is a vessel for the human experience, a sort of physical anchor for the memories that we collect. But when the land changes, those memories are uprooted and scattered like pieces of paper in the wind. Sometimes I feel like Janna and I are scrambling around, trying to grab as many scraps as we can before they all blow away.
More than anything, I think displacement creates loneliness. When it’s impossible to feel at ease in your own home, the rest of the world can become difficult to relate to. To lose a home is to lose the anchor that situates you among the world that surrounds you. And yet, over these past years, Janna has shown me what it looks like to hold fast in the face of estrangement; to doggedly keep those connections alive that are most important in life.
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