The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread is a 16mm feature film that highlights ways unseen fungi help slow climate change and mitigate its effects. This experimental documentary will be filmed in Germany near the home of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century abbess, proto-feminist scholar, composer, and self-taught naturalist. Her copious writings demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of more-than-human agency and continue to influence environmental dialogues nearly a millennia later. Hildegard’s life was also marked by numerous mystical visions, and her writings mention intriguing images of golden strands connecting all life. The Golden Thread reimagines the connective threads from Hildegard’s 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.