Organized in conjunction with Whitechapel Gallery, London, Ballroom Marfa presented the 2015 season of Artists’ Film International, a global exchange that showcases artists working in film, video and animation, featuring the work of Los Angeles-based filmmaker Brigid McCaffrey.

Many of McCaffrey’s films are set in landscapes that convey precarity and flux. Her approach to documentary focuses on environments and people in transition, and considers these subjects over long periods of time. Her works meditate on the tension between individualism and community in the midst of unstable economic and ecological realities. Shaped by the process of portraiture, the films respond to the physical and emotional changes of their subjects, creating documents that fuse representations of self and place. 

Ballroom hosted a free screening of a selection of McCaffrey’s works on film, including the piece nominated for AFI–Paradise Springs–which features Ren Lallatin, an itinerant geologist who studies the Mojave Desert. The film follows the wandering geologist as she describes her interactions with the natural world, while voicing her rejection of land regulation and privatization. A conversation with McCaffrey and Lallatin complemented the screening, and the following day offered a walk-in loop of the other AFI film from around the world. 

A geology walk and lecture led by Lallatin and a local geology professor, Jesse Kelsch from Sul Ross State University, added context to the films. The walk/lecture took place at the Far West Texas-based nonprofit Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s land reserve and geology viewing area.