FILM SYNOPSIS

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The San Juan Ridge Community in the Sierra Foothills has survived countless threats during its 50-year history including mining, logging and arson.  Established by artists and ecologists in the 1970’s this thriving group now faces their most monumental challenge to date – wildfire and drought caused by climate change. 

 

For the last seventeen years hundreds of volunteers have stitched the story of their struggles and celebrations into 12 tapestry panels that total 83 feet.  A Radical Thread is a feature documentary film that chronicles the community’s ethos of collectivism, play and sustainability as visualized in the tapestry, and explores how the elders pass their values to the next generations who are confronting the threat of wildfire through their newest cooperative endeavor, Force of Nature Forestry.

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Tapestry visionary, Marsha Stone, tapestry illustrator/designer, Jennifer Rain Crosby and principal embroider, Mary Moore articulate the scenes stitched in the tapestry.  Shelly Covert, the spokesperson for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe presents the tribe’s growing community trust to save the land and establish cultural reparations.  Gary Snyder’s prescient archival footage about the environmental costs of fossil fuels are combined with his current reflections on the future of the Ridge. 

 

But the main character is the tapestry itself that visualizes a community originating with much optimism and hope, runs into multiple challenges, grows and learns as it survives, faces the existential threat of climate change, and comes together to understand new ways of sustainability for future generations.  The fact that many voices contribute to the community’s narrative, reflects the power of their collective nature as well the process of making the tapestry.  As second-generation Ridge member Caleb Dardick says, the Ridge endures because each member will step up and say, “I want to add my stitch.”