The Golden Thread

The Golden Threadu00a0is a 16mm feature film that highlights ways unseen fungiu00a0help slow climate change and mitigate its effects. This experimental documentary will be filmed in Germany near the home of Hildegard of Bingen,u00a0a 12th century abbess, proto-feminist scholar, composer, and self-taught naturalist. Her copious writings demonstrate a sophisticated understandings of more-than-human agency and continue to influence environmental dialogues nearly a millennia later. Hildegardu2019s life was also marked by numerous mystical visions, and her writings mention intriguing images of golden strands connecting all life.rnrnThe Golden Threadu00a0reimagines the connective threads from Hildegardu2019s visions as the glistening fungal mycorrhizae that recent scientific discoveries indicate are integral to interspecies plant collaboration, human agriculture, forest conservation, and carbon sequestration. Throughout the course of the film, animated sequences will make the agency of these golden fungal threads visible as they envelope the architecture of the Abbey of St. Hildegard, a religious community founded by Hildegard that is still active today.