The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread is a 16mm single-channel feature that illuminates alternative soil conservation approaches rooted in both scientific innovation and the environmental philosophies of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century abbess and protofeminist scholar. This experimental nonfiction film intercuts animations illustrating fungi’s playful omnipresence with interviews with scientists, nuns, and farmers near Hildegard’s abbey and biographical segments detailing Hildegard’s contributions. Her writings will serve as a structural guide for this project which will draw aesthetic inspiration from medieval illuminations. This film is revolutionary in its interweaving of a nonfiction representation of Hildegard’s life and a focus on fungal mitigation of climate change.  As anthropogenic degradation of soil biodiversity manifests in increasingly violent ways,  The Golden Thread turns to feminist environmental histories to present opportunities for ethical interspecies relation.