(pensive music) (adventurous music) - Welcome back to "TVFilm".

I'm your host, Jermaine Wells.

"TVFilm" showcases the incredible talents of Upstate New York media makers across all genres.

We have not one, not two, but three films to show you today.

First, we're going to watch "Elegy for a Glacier" by Sarah Bachinger.

This project was born through the exploration of grief, mourning, and climate anxiety as a way to foster connection to and stewardship for our more than human kin.

Let's check it out.

(waves crashing) (water rushing) (crackling, water dripping) (tense tones ringing) (water rushing) (water rushing louder) (somber music) (somber music builds) - Humbly, I approach your margins, scanning the topographies of loss etched in the earth, markers of passing, marks of presence.

It is at these edges where things grow.

It is at these edges where things die.

Our existence hangs in a lucid balance, slices of atmosphere, stories in flow and flux.

You allow me to hold deep time in a fleeting moment.

Though the consequences of my contact drip through fingers and moulins into meltwater rivers, ashes floating out to see and back again.

(somber music continues) Breaths of advance and retreat, pulsing blue spectrum horizons From crevice to cradle we are linked, intertwined in fluid connection, echoes in veins and rivers and molecules ending in the cold continuum of ancient tongues.

I understand now the unsettling symmetry of how we crumble in on our own movements.

Though there are still some that don't believe, though you have been telling us for eons, pouring into footprints, imprints, woven and erased.

Our vulnerabilities mapped in edges that reconfigure continents, while echoes of imbalances whisper on changing winds, unraveling the ties that bind, and reminding us that no thread exists in isolation.

It is at these edges where life finds its foothold.

It is at your edges where stories unfurl and fade and the echoes of our choices mingle of the swell of your retreat.

(somber music continues) (somber music fades) (ice cracking) (water dripping) (clapper clicks) My name is Sarah Bachinger and the name of my film is "Elegy For a Glacier".

"Elegy For a Glacier" is a film that I created to express the climate grief that I experienced after visiting Iceland for the first time.

I had never been witness or in the presence of glaciers before, and it was just a profound experience of awe.

And, coming home from that trip, that feeling stuck with me and I felt I needed to find a new way to express those feelings of climate grief and anxiety that I hadn't really been in touch with before.

This is my first foray into filmmaking.

I've been a photographer for 20 years now and this was a new avenue for me to explore, to be able to also express my emotional state, in a way, to create this poetry piece that's spoken over the images.

I understand now, the unsettling symmetry of how we crumble in on our own movements.

(crackling, water dripping) (water gurgling) So the soundscape for the film was created from field recordings that I've done, both in Iceland and here in New York.

I used a hydrophone to record sounds from underneath the ice on Round Lake where I live, and incorporated that with some sounds from some tunnels with a highway that go over for clanking sounds and sounds from the glaciers and different recordings I had done in the field.

(traffic rushing) The initial thought was to have something a bit eerie and crackly because I wanted it almost to sound like a transmission from the future, warning us about what could happen if we don't honor the spaces that we live and our landscapes and so the score for the film was kind of composed with that in mind.

I included the quote in the beginning because I feel it's important to recognize not only what we are losing but, through our actions, through our reconnecting to places and people and culture and community, that we still have an opportunity to save some of these things.

And for some, it might be too late.

For some, we might not have that chance, but there are things that we can do.

My work is really trying to find ways to inspire curiosity, awe, and reverence for nature.

Because, if we don't love something and feel connected to something, we won't protect it and that is the ultimate goal, is to foster a deeper connection and, ultimately, stewardship.

- Our second film of tonight's lineup is one that director Elizabeth Ennis said was inspired by too much togetherness.

You have to see it to really appreciate what she means.

Here's "Field Cam".

(static rustling) (birds chirping) - [Elizabeth] Oh!

Oh, God!

(static grows louder) (Elizabeth grunting) Dammit!

Okay, forget it.

(engine rumbles) (engine cuts off) (tarp rustling) (Elizabeth grunting) (engine revving) (engine rumbling) - [Husband] Oh, ow!

Ow, ow!

- Uh oh.

Goddammit.

(gun shot bursts) (chainsaw engine revving) (engine rumbling) (mower engine rumbling) (birds chirping) My name is Elizabeth Ennis and the name of my film is "Field Cam".

"Field Cam" is kind of a COVID-era film about spending way too much time together during the pandemic and something has to give, and I decided to kill my husband and dismember him.

(laughs) We were getting on each other's nerves quite a bit at that time, and I was just sitting around, thinking about us getting into snappy little arguments and (laughs) just the ultimate conclusion.

(engine revving) - [Husband] Ouch, ow!

- When I'm dragging him away on the tarp with the tractor, he started going, "Ouch, ouch!"

It was because there were all this gravel underneath the tarp and it was really hurting him, so we just used that.

It was perfect.

Then I shoot him, to make sure he is dead.

(gun shot bursts) He's such a good sport, my husband.

What draws me to the weird and the dark?

Well, since I was a child, I've been an incredible horror fanatic and really love horror, so it's always been part of my life and it just seeps into everything.

I am an artist and filmmaker, I would say.

My work recently has been all film, but intermingled with that is a lot of collage work where I find bizarre images, print them out high res, and then cut them all up and collage them together.

But really concentrating the last 10, 12 years on the filmmaking.

What informs all of my artwork is a very dark and twisted sense of humor, and I hope everyone gets a kick out of it and a laugh, maybe?

- Last but not least, we have, "I Had To" by Vinh Nguyen.

This film explores Nguyen's Vietnamese background and why he's always felt like he's living parallel to everyone else.

By blending poetry, archival footage, and family photos, the film seeks to bridge Nguyen's generation to his parents' generation, as well as those who suffered from the Vietnam War.

Let's take a look.

(static rustles) - [Vinh] I woke up this morning.

I ate, went to work, shoulder-to-shoulder cars, eye-level heads like an ocean.

I worked, I went home, I slept.

(rhythmic bass echoes) I woke up this morning.

I ate, went to work, shoulder-to-shoulder cars, eye-level heads like an ocean.

I worked, I went home, I slept.

I woke up this morning.

Went to work.

Shoulder-to-shoulder.

Like an ocean.

I worked and laid down.

I woke up this morning.

I ate, went to work, shoulder-to-shoulder cars, eye-level heads like an ocean.

I worked, I went home, I slept.

(heartbeat thuds) I woke up this morning.

I ate, went to work, shoulder-to-shoulder cars, eye-level heads like an ocean.

I worked, I went home, I slept.

I woke up this morning.

I went to work.

Shoulder-to-shoulder cars like an ocean.

I worked.

Came home.

Didn't eat.

I didn't work.

I crawled, shoulder-to-shoulder.

In this ocean, I tried to leave home.

- Not hard enough.

- Spiraled into the nonsense until I shook death's cousin's hand.

- I wanted it gone.

- Held it, until it choked.

Held it, until it-- - [Both] Choked.

(waves crashing) - [Vinh] My brother's hands and mine, in mine.

He drank, sipped from the sea salt until he became thirsty.

And when we looked up, the night looked right through us.

- Right through us.

(waves crashing) (thoughtful music) - [Vinh] I looked over the edge to love from afar, this boundless ocean where I am a single ripple upon a wave, born from a tide that no longer belongs to me.

- Vietnam is now a vast prison where we people, we are being treated just like animals, not like human beings.

- I woke up the next morning.

I tried.

(static crackles) So my name is Vinh Nguyen and the film that I made is titled "I Had To".

It was for an experimental, kinda film-related class.

I had these poems that I wrote when I was, like, a lot younger.

As a first generation Asian-American, like, my family kind of, like, built all these restaurants locally and, like, as kids, me and my brother, we would kind of, like, grow up in that space and also kind of work in that space too.

So, like, we kind of grew up a lot different.

And so, like, we worked and kind of didn't really live like I guess normal kids would.

So, like, the poem that I had written was very much, like, a monotonous, day-to-day kind of, like, routine-based continuous loop.

I worked, I went home, I slept.

I realized that I was trying to, like, touch on some more deeper meaning, like my generational gap and, like, between my parents and I.

Like, I was born here.

My parents were immigrants from the Vietnam War.

So, like, a lot of their, you know, their trials and journey isn't really a part of my life, but it kind of is, at the same time.

I love collaging.

I love to the tactileness of just, you know, visual media.

So I was just kind of, like, putting stuff down visually, just trying to figure out connections.

Like, "Oh, this is my mom when she was younger."

"Oh, this is my great grandmother that I've never known."

This was me kind of, like, forming my own memories of memories and then kind of using that as, like, a backdrop for my composition and my editing.

(thoughtful music) (waves crashing) I looked over the edge to love from afar, this boundless ocean where I am a single ripple upon a wave, born from a tide that no longer belongs to me.

That that was, that's a whole completely new stanza that I wrote for that poem and the tide is, you know, this thing, this history, of my parents and my family that, you know, I was born from.

Like, I'm essentially a product of the Vietnam War, but I feel so detached and removed from it.

That's why that line, "I love from afar," is kind of me in that moment of, like, "I notice this thing, it's not really mine, but, like, I can love it because of what it is, it brought my parents together.

I'm here because of that."

And despite the, you know, the dreariness of the war and the diaspora of people, like, there is that beauty of perseverance that comes out of it and it's something that I really wanna grab at.

But I know at that time, it's not really mine, but I really want it to be mine.

- That's it.

You'll have to wait 'til next week for more films.

Or do you?

Because you can always check out wmht.org/tvfilm to learn more about this season's filmmakers and to watch more films on demand.

And don't forget to connect with WMHT on social media and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Thanks for tuning in.

I'm Jermaine Wells.

I'll see you next week.

(adventurous music) - [Announcer] "TV Film" is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State legislature.