Film short abstract

An ethnographic film that explores the work of repair and anticipation in Dulce, a town in the Jicarilla Apache Nation.

Film synopsis

I began filming Dulce while living and working in the town as part of a public health initiative led by Dr. Yolandra Gomez, a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. As I did not arrive with a film in mind, the project grew out of observing people navigate their daily lives in proximity to interventions from various individuals and institutions.

The film unfolds around these acts: searching for plants that are no longer where they once were, revisiting a childhood home after decades of disrepair, trying to fix a truck that cannot be fixed. To me, these gestures do not come across as failure, but as ways of staying in relation to land, memory, and ultimately one another. I was interested in feelings of an unstable present, between what is remembered and what is anticipated, and how repair becomes a way of negotiating these tensions.

The presence of the Mormon Church in the film reflects a way of imagining help and intervention that follows different sensibilities — more linear and assured forms of coming to oneself.