Watching: ALMA

Overview

A non-narrative short film tracking the movement of a flock of women through a megalithic landscape. They appear to be working, enacting a cryptic ceremony with a sense of calm & purposeful labor. A score weaving together their breath & hums with sounds collected from the landscape: wind, Rattlesnake grass & their hands rubbing against stone. The women's gestures come from both work & dance – evoking the strange overlap between labor & ritual. This film began as a response to the physicality of daily life as a mother & the rhythm of these acts; the relentless repetition of parenting, working, tending the world with our bodies. This repetition can easily become vacant labor, but it can also transform into a kind of meditative, even transcendent ritual, a collective communion with the landscape & each other. ALMA offers itself as a companion piece to McKenna’s photographic rubbings, a glimpse into the same world from where her art arises.