Tropic Shale (in progress)

Feature Documentary Ali, the filmmaker and a recent immigrant to the US, documents the cultural and political divisions manifested by the contested land rights of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in Southern Utah, by engaging in numerous discussions with the monument's stakeholders, including those who support it, those who oppose it, and those with more nuanced views. The participants range from paleontologists, geologists, biologists, archeologists, and economists who studied the area or worked for the monument, to Indigenous Americans who have a spiritual stake in the land, local politicians and representatives, environmentalist advocates, lifelong LDS residents and ranchers, and recent “move-ins”. The discussions explore themes of identity, morality, truth-making, discourse, compassion, greed, and sublimity within the contexts of grazing, environmentalism, religion, land management, ownership, governance, tourism, and capitalism. Nearly all the interviews are filmed against the backdrop of the landscape, intercut with images of the otherworldly scenery of remote Southern Utah. The journalistic study of the nuances of a particular political struggle becomes a microcosm for the condition of the nation, and possibly humanity at large. It is also a deeply personal story of the filmmaker’s own search for home and his instinct for beauty. The film invites the viewer to resist easy conclusions and to dwell in the tension of opposites. Through the camera, viewers are granted the open mindset of outsiders – by watching and waiting, the land opens its secret. The secret of holding tension between opposites and seeing beyond human scale and time. The sedimentary formations, spanning hundreds of millions of years, exceed our understanding of history, and the landscape is teaching humans a lesson about making peace with conflict.