Sanctuary

“Welcome to heaven on earth” is one of few spoken lines in filmmaking duo David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s latest documentary which puts donkey “actors” centerstage. The camerawork is simple and quietly observant, and the sound design is continuously immersive. No interviews or dialogue interrupt this unobtrusive approach. No explanations by title are given. The result is a meditative, hypnotic cinematic flow of donkey behavior much of which remains indecipherable. Sanctuary deliberately recalls Robert Bresson’s 1966 testimonial to a stoic donkey, Au hasard Balthazar. It is also inspired by David Abram’s 2011 book Becoming Animal, which argues that we have lost our ability to apprehend the sensuous natural world amidst our on-screen news obsessed virtual frenzy.

Watching Sanctuary alters us as we watch, as we leave the realm of our own species, and enter a quasi-mysterious world of rustling straw, munching jaws, the industrial clanking of metal doors, the thud of multiple hooves on turf, antennae-like ears flickering back and forth at the communal feeding manger, and many a snorting exhale of donkey breath. Gazing back at the camera with timid blinks, showing wide-eyed apprehension, pacing nervously in their stalls, calling out to other donkeys with what sounds like yearning, these animals foster empathy in us as we witness their rehabilitation. Perhaps "heaven on earth" is indeed a place without judgment or cruelty, in which simple needs are provided, with understanding and tolerance? Entering into dialogue with Bresson's intimation that we are all Balthazars, Redmon and Sabin, like him, promote the possibility of empathy and a vision of the consolation of sharing even non-human experience, instead of enduring the loneliness of it alone.

Obviously these other beings do not speak with a human tongue, they do not speak in words. They might speak in song, like many birds, or in rhythm, like the crickets, and the ocean waves. They may speak a language of movements and gestures, or articulate themselves in shifting shadows…Step into their shade. Listen close. David Abram, "Becoming Animal"

Rotterdam International Film Festival, January 2017

Filmmaking duo David Redmon and Ashley Sabin together produce, direct, photograph and edit critically acclaimed cinematic documentaries that have screened internationally in festivals and on television worldwide at Telluride, Sundance, Toronto, Cinema du Reel, Rotterdam, Visions du Reel, RIDM, MoMA, Telluride, and Viennale Film Festivals and on PBS, POV, BBC, CBC, DR, ARTE, and NHK.

Their body of work includes Kim’s Video whereby they play with the forms and tropes of various cinema genres as co-director David Redmon sets off on a quest to find a legendary lost video collection of 55,000 movies in Sicily. Four “animal ethnography” films based in the world of donkeys and funded by the Leverhulme Trust: Sanctuary (2017), Do Donkeys Act?(2017), Choreography (2014), and Herd (2015); two dream/memory cinema poems Sentient 1 & 2 (2015/2016); a 6 minute snowbound ballet mécanique, Neige (2016); a suite of U.S. post-industrialization themed films set inside three interconnected factories on the coast of Prospect Harbor, Maine: Downeast (2012), Night Labor (2013), and Kingdom of Animal(2012); a feature documentary about the labyrinthine world of teenage modeling in which a New York based scout recruits Siberian teenagers to the Tokyo model market Girl Model (2011); a film linking China and New Orleans through globalized manufacturing of cheap throwaway goods for American leisure pursuit, Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) and two “carnivalesque” character driven films set in Louisiana Kamp Katrina (2007) and Invisible Girlfriend (2009). Lastly, set on the U.S. Mexico border, a longitudinal love story about family relationships and the meaning of “home” Intimidad (2008), which has been described as “a documentary fairytale of truly humbling proportions.”