170 kilometers off the coast of Nova Scotia, the mysterious Sable Island is inhabited by only a handful of scientists and some 500 wild horses. A woman, Zoe Lucas, has devoted her entire life to protecting the biodiversity of this small piece of land. In Geographies of Solitudefilmmaker Jacquelyn Mills portrays the beauty of the place and the importance of the work of the 76-year-old naturalist like no one else has done before.
“It was on television, when I was a child, that I must have heard about Zoe for the first time,” says the documentary filmmaker from Cape Breton. In Nova Scotia, the stories that take place on the island are well known. We are often told of shipwrecks and herds of sea lions lying on the beaches. I always wanted to make a movie out of it. »
As Sable Island has often been the subject of documentaries — including one by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1982 — Jacquelyn Mills set herself the goal of ” not to do a traditional biography”. The bet was brilliantly taken up, in particular because Geographies is not just a documentary about the island. Above all, it represents, with gentleness and sensitivity, the ecological nature of Zoe Lucas’ ascetic work.
An “admirable devotion”
Living alone on the island for about 25 years, Ms.me Lucas has observed hundreds of species, from small insects to majestic horses that have been there since its colonization in the 16e century. “She documented every grain of sand, every little bird,” says the director, admiringly.
Zoe Lucas also founded the Green Horse Society, a non-profit organization that has been working to protect the territory’s biodiversity since 2002, and is president of the Sable Island Institute, dedicated to similar causes.
Jacquelyn Mills therefore followed the naturalist during three filming periods of approximately two weeks, spread over different seasons. His film shows us the island in all its states, as Mme Lucas shows us around. “We follow Zoe in her daily life, as she takes notes and samples objects on the island, indicates Mme Mills, but we also see her showing me different places, like the best places to take a nap or to observe the stars. »
The charming lady has not only documented the living species on the island. She also collected tons of trash from the beaches — water bottles, deflated balloons, macaroons. She collects all kinds of them at home. Using large electronic charts, she also compared the provenance of each of these objects to learn about the winds and ocean currents.
“My understanding of the importance of his work deepened as I spent time on the island,” says the director. His devotion is admirable. It’s breathtaking. »
The island as an artistic medium
Seeking to echo Zoe Lucas’ environmentalist approach in her own practice, Jacquelyn Mills wanted to integrate nature into her film as much as possible.
In particular, she placed electrodes on different plants on the island in order to more precisely record the sound of the insects that landed there. She has also developed images on algae and various natural materials.
“We’re surrounded by a lot of noise these days, and with the environmental crisis we’re going through, I think we have to be aware of the reasons why we make films,” she explains. So I wondered if there were more ecological tools for filming. These questions led me to techniques that I had not explored before. I did it by trial and error, and it worked. »
It is also in this way, and by assuming the subjectivity of her approach, that the filmmaker has constructed the narrative scheme of her film. “The structure developed intuitively based on the order in which I myself discovered the island. It’s not very instinctive, but I wanted to open the film with images of winter, because it was during winter that I went there for the first time. »
Everything she discovered there naturally guided her towards the final cut we know today. Even the tone of the film and its obvious desire to portray its subject with sensitivity is inspired by Zoe, she says: “I dare to believe that I applied as much care in each frame of the film as Zoe can do for each small grain of sand. »