Description
Once the largest freshwater lake West of the Mississippi, Tulare Lake was drained by settlers in the 19th century and has been turned into some of the most valuable agricultural land in the world. This visual essay explores the void of the former lake and the ongoing water crisis. Now, agricultural machinery, animals, and humans search for water in the dry valley left behind.
About the directors:
Carlo Nasisse
Director, cinematographer. His works Stay Here Awhile (2021). Animal eye (2024) have been featured in the New Yorker, SXSW, Slamdance, and the New Orleans Film Festival. His most recent short film, Direcciones (co-directed with Maria Luisa Santos), won the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Short at the San Francisco Film Festival. He holds an MFA from Stanford University.
Shirley Yumeng He
Visual artist and documentary filmmaker from Beijing, China. Yumeng’s background in Anthropology informs her storytelling. She is passionate about telling stories like Fortune (2023), TheOtherSideofTheMountain (2024), that focuson identity, diaspora, memory, land, the interwoven of personal and collective experience, and the human and more-than-human relationships.