The Sky on Location

Somewhere between a landscape film and an experimental work of social psychology lies Babette Mangolte's The Sky on Location. Through a series of shots of the American landscape strung together intuitively, Mangolte examines the relation between the American consciousness and the concept of wilderness. The effect is slightly majestic but understated.

More accomplished cinematographically -- the 19th century British painter F.W.J. Turner was obviously a large and excellently employed influence -- than formally, the film sometimes veers wildly between segments. What the film succeeds in doing is constructing an alternate geography.

By rejecting the logic of maps for a cartography of color and image, Mangolte recreates the American landscape as a wild, undomesticated pictorial space.