To Keep the Mountain at Bay

Overview

An homage to Etel Adnan (1925-2021) the film invokes a queer and ghostly presence through the recitation of Adnan’s poetry in Sausalito, CA where she lived for decades, teaching and writing some of her pivotal work, such as Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986). Footage shot in California and Caucasus Mountains is overlaid with the poetry of Nima Yooshij, June Jordan, Etel Adnan, and contemporary artist Emilia Yang, to map exile as a space of collective difference and transnational solidarity. Against the passivity of nostalgia and the impossibility of assimilation it is the figure of ‘stranger’ (June Jordan) that keeps the surging waves of displacement alive.