Brigid McCaffrey’s debut feature plays very much like a pleasant walk in the woods. One is surrounded by the hazy glint of sunlight on foliage, and although you would be hard-pressed to say exactly what it means, you emerge with a notable sense of well-being, what some might call a spiritual cleanse. Sanctuary Station is a free-form documentary about various women who have made their homes in the redwood forests and other natural spaces in northern California, and although the subject matter is diffuse, with various people appearing in the film only to subtly fade out of sight, the major throughline of Sanctuary Station is the life and work of Mary Norbert Körte (1934-2022), an ex-nun who built a home on the periphery of what had been a logging railroad. She was a poet, and her free verse on the environment, and her place within it, serves as a kind of musical refrain throughout the film.
McCaffrey is clearly not interested in offering the viewer a documentary in the conventional sense. She is an experimental filmmaker with a particular focus on environmental and naturalist themes. Her 2017 short film Bad Mama, Who Cares is a profile of a geologist, Ren Lallatin, who lives on the physical margins of society. McCaffrrey has also made films in collaboration with experimental ethnographer Ben Russell. Sanctuary Station is, as they now say, a vibe more than a delivery system for concrete information. What emerges quite clearly, however, is a collective portrait of women who have gone their own way, sometimes forming new communities and sometimes happily living on their own. They have not so much rejected consumer society as they behave as if it is an intrusive species that, once introduced into the biome, must be contended with. Sanctuary Station provides a warm cinematic respite from clear directionality, allowing the viewer to likewise find their own path.
Published as part of First Look 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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