Windward

On the remote, windswept Canadian island of Fogo, the camera observes the coastline and children playing along it. The long, static shots allow the children’s movements and the landscape to unfold at an unhurried pace. They run and play, disappear behind the rocks, then reappear in the frame. Their movements are inseparable from the environment: the wind, the water, the rocky shore and the ever-changing light. Children’s play becomes a way to explore and measure the space itself: the rocks, grass, sea, sky and distances that make up this vast landscape. The film invites viewers to spend time on the island, feel its scale and the wind, and surrender to the act of watching.

Sharon Lockhart makes films that explore radical approaches to time and the politics of looking. Rooted in long-term relationships and site-specific processes, her work creates a space of mutual regard in which observation becomes an act of solidarity and slowness a form of resistance.