ABIGAIL SEVERANCE
ACADIA
essay-documentary | est 90 min | color, HD & 16mm | in post production
A personal geography of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia that journeys through
Acadian history and into nationalism, nostalgia and their echoes in the modern
body politic.
Creative Capital finalist 2014 | On Our Radar
http://creative-capital.org/onourradar
Practice & Research Grant, CalArts 2015
Faculty Development Grant, CalArts 2015
An essay film about migration, nostalgia and running from the law in Nova Scotia, Acadia investigates the parallel histories of Acadian subculture and my own family. In a pilgrimage to the island 30 years after leaving, I find traces of Acadia both real and imagined, a local outlaw and epic failures of memory. The film is an attempt to map archival, personal, historical and fictional renderings of a place built on longing. Like many homelands, Cape Breton gets re-invented in its memorializing.