CAAMFest 2024: Ecologies of Sustenance Shorts Program

What sustains our communities? Constellating food politics and land use as vital factors of social life, these films trace the woven relations between human and more-than-human ecologies with spotlights on the ways land and food mediate our coexistence.

Expected Guests in Attendance: Director Andrew Nadkarni (Between Earth & Sky), Director Ái Vuong (Boca Chica), Producer Nick Price (Boca Chica), Director/Writer Jackie! Zhou (Order for Pickup), Director Harleen Kaur Bal (Unpacking Immigration)

Shorts:

BETWEEN EARTH & SKY
DIRECTED BY ANDREW NADKARNI
Studying “what grows back” after disturbance in the rainforest canopy, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni must turn her research question onto herself after a life-threatening fall from a tree.

PRESERVING TASTE
DIRECTED BY GELAREH KIAZAND
Chef Hanif Sadr introduces Northern Iranian cuisine to San Francisco, navigating personal and political challenges of ingredient sourcing and immigration restrictions.

BOCA CHICA
DIRECTED BY AI VUONG & SAMUEL DIAZ FERNANDEZ
Indigenous ecologies and ways of being are threatened by SpaceX on the Texas Gulf Coast.

ORDER FOR PICKUP
DIRECTED BY JACKIE! ZHOU
A woman must find a way back to herself as her reality blurs into a cycle of work and digitally-mediated isolation.

UNPACKING IMMIGRATION
DIRECTED BY HARLEEN KAUR BAL
A Punjabi Sikh meatpacking community in California’s Central Valley reflects on migration, labor, and belonging.

WILD HOGS AND SAFFRON
DIRECTED BY ANDY SARJAHANI
Set in the Arkansas Ozarks, a wild hog hunt sets the stage for a meditation on cross-cultural friendship and solidarity in unexpected places.