Oasis

In “Oasis,” one of the most narrative video projects we’ve featured at TQ, Sofia Fotenot delivers a new myth in the vibrating, collective voice of the bees. Among old clips of desert footage bright with spots of decay, Fotenot tells of a desert “like a body, breathing in and out,” where a beekeeper who cannot remember if oases exist leads a cloud of sick bees in search of flowers.

Stitched into Fotenot’s story-out-of-time is the record of contemporary bee viruses, suburbs, seed saving, and “brood jelly laced with our own vaccines.” As Fotenot’s patient bees grow thirsty their “dry sobbing” keeper meets a saguaro “curving its excellent backbone,” then a horned lizard, the trickster “landlord of this dune,” and the wind moves in patterns “as if to memorize her own instructions.” “Oasis” is a story of collective memory, action, and loss. It is a myth about waggling forward, making good use of dusty footage and the eye always inside the hive.

– Sarah Minor, TriQuarterly Film Editor