What does it mean to restore reciprocal human relationships with land?
This past summer we got to explore this question with artist and animator Lily Xie as we co-created a magical short film for the Center for Cultural Power’s Climate Woke campaign. As a member of MG’s most recent Creative Wildfire cohort, Lily was compelled to help us tell a story about land rematriation as a necessary and healing path to climate justice, with our own liberated land site in the East Bay hills as the backdrop.
The Center for Cultural Power awarded Lily a grant to practice and play with her whimsical and tactile craft of stop-motion animation, fully immersed in the elements of the foggy woodlands and sun-kissed grasslands of the Bay Area. Together with Ashley Salaz from Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and MG collective member Dana Viloria, Lily made shadows of summer lupine sprout from dry earth and tumbled rocks down to give way to the waters of Lisjan Creek.
Written and narrated by MG collective members Angela Aguilar, Quinton Sankofa, and Dana Viloria, Lily’s film Remembering Our Way Forward tells the tale of how colonization disrupted some of our land relations—and how we are returning to those relations and remembering who we are as humans building new worlds that will be resilient to climate change.
In October, MG and the Center for Cultural Power held a special screening of Remembering Our Way Forward, along with the gorgeous short film hija de Florinda by Shenny De Los Angeles and Iiritu.
Stay tuned for a podcast that highlights the beautiful sounds and discussions from the film screening, coming soon.