THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY
"Paradise is home. Home as it was or home as it should have been. Paradise is one’s own place, one's own people, one's own world, knowing and known, perhaps even loving and loved. Yet every child is cast from paradise-into growth and destruction, into solitude and new community, into vast, ongoing change.”
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
In the year after we moved into our Altadena home in 2002, I filmed ten minutes every day, recording ordinary moments with my husband and daughter. That footage now lives on two hard drives—two of the few items I took when we evacuated before the house was destroyed in the Eaton Wildfire of January 2025.
The house was small and carefully designed by Frederick Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who built it in 1948 with his wife, Gertie. Frankl paid close attention to detail, especially to how natural light moved through the house across the seasons. Floor-to-ceiling windows brought the outside in, and the home was built of steel, with a retaining wall for flood protection. It survived extreme winds and past fires and sheltered many families over the decades, including ours for more than twenty years.
Frederick and Gertie were German émigrés who fled Europe. In a book about German refugees after World War II, Gertie recalls that “losing a house was a routine event.” Their homes were lost not by accident, but because they were forced to flee. She describes being ordered to vacate her home within two weeks so Aryan tenants could move in—tenants who then lived there for 24 years. They were constantly moving, trying to escape Europe, until they finally reached Los Angeles. Gertie later said she never truly felt she belonged there. The repeated loss of home left her without a sense of stability or trust. I hope the house she and Frederick built gave her some comfort. I don’t know if it did.
For us, losing our home was not routine. It was sudden and devastating. I feel an unexpected guilt about losing a house that was built with such care, even though that feeling makes little sense.
When my mother died in 2000, I discovered a box containing twenty years of her handwritten journals. I read them twice. My siblings never had the chance to read them before they were lost in a fire. Now all that remains are my memories and my interpretations of her thoughts and feelings. Translating those memories into something meaningful for my family feels like a heavy responsibility.
Since the fire, I’ve been thinking about what I call “souvenirs from the past.” The loss of physical things—books, photos, artwork, clothes, letters—is profound. These objects are not just possessions; they hold memory. In the end, what remains are the memories we carry within us.
The Geography of Memory began long before the fire. It started with a question: where does memory live? In the body, in places, in objects, in shared experience? I was once a dancer, and as my body changes with age, I’m struck by the contrast between what I remember being able to do and what I can do now. My body holds memories of movement that no longer match my physical reality. Is it possible to find a new movement language—one that holds imagination, memory, and present ability at the same time?
This project explores how memory lives in the body, in muscle memory, in objects and places, and in our interactions with others. I’m interested in how memory disrupts everyday life, creating new rhythms that we must learn to carry forward.
The project also includes dancers and performers. I give them a written sequence of simple, accessible gestures—lifting arms, looking back, walking a pattern, shaping the arms. Each dancer interprets these movements through their own experiences and memories. We film in different locations. There is a quiet, wordless exchange between us. I don’t ask them to explain what they feel; I observe and imagine, letting their movements intersect with my own memories and perspective. I record them—something I can’t do for myself—yet through directing and filming, I feel the movements deeply in my own body.
One location was my former home. The dancers moved through the house with heightened attention to its architecture: the light, lines, hallways, doors, and windows framing the yard. They explored every space, inside and out, moving in unison, duets, trios, and solos. It felt like a silent conversation between their bodies and the house. Now, this footage has become a portal to the past.
As I edited the material, a structure emerged. I instinctively added a track from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The music’s intensity reflects the rawness of human experience—joy, loss, love, despair. The piece centers on a ritual sacrifice made so that spring can arrive.
I now find myself wondering what my own new season will be. The fire destroyed many things that once defined me. Do I replace what was lost, or do I reinvent myself? How do the memories held in my body and mind shape who I become next? What is this new geography I’m entering?
Filmmaking has become a new way of dancing—this time with the camera. Like spring, new beginnings are fragile. Growth requires struggle. Shoots push through mud, bloom briefly, then fade, making way for what comes next. Each cycle involves loss and renewal.
When I listen to The Rite of Spring, it vibrates through my body. Something dormant wakes up. It doesn’t feel like aging as decline, but as possibility. Watching the dancers move through spaces that are now ash creates a dreamlike experience—one that lives on in memory, in their bodies, and in this work.
Geography of Memory Vimeo Showcase
One aspect of the Geography of Memory project involves a dedicated effort to produce one-minute videos crafted from footage I collect during my daily life and travels. These videos were originally shared on Instagram as stories, disappearing after 24 hours. However, they can now be viewed in a Vimeo Showcase linked below. At the core of this work is a collaboration with my good friend, David Shohl, a prolific and talented composer whom I have known since our college days.
Video Sketches
“The task for the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope.” - Leonora Carrington
Sketch
Roz & Laura
Sketch
Miriam
Sketch
Sol
Sketch
Roz, Stephanie, & Laura
Katrina and Matt
Hallways
House
HOME IS A HARD DRIVE IN MY BRAIN. by Nuala Sanchez
I think about being a child.
I think about using the landline to call my best friend’s house. I can hear her mother answer and I ask nicely if she can come over.
I think about looking out the window in the evening and seeing the headlights of my dad’s car pulling into the driveway. My mother tells me to set the table.
I think about pushing the cart at the grocery store while my mom shops. I can taste strawberry Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
I think about waking up in the morning. I can hear footsteps descending the stairs and I know who they belong to.
And now, I am far away. My hair has grown, my skin is paler, my fingers have tapered.
Sometimes I’ll happen upon a familiar smell, in a friend’s apartment, on a stranger’s jacket, and feel myself transported. To somewhere I know well but can’t quite place. And for a small moment I am a child again.
I like to close my eyes and walk around the house. I open every cabinet and every drawer. I’m not looking for anything, I just like to know everything is in its place. Hair ties in the drawer to the left of the bathroom sink. Aluminum foil in the third drawer by the oven. My mother’s wedding dress in her closet. Batteries. Napkins. Band-aids. My ballet slippers.
I make as much noise as possible. I pull a chair out from the table to hear it screech against the floor. I shake a bottle of vitamins. Flip through pages of a coffee table book. Turn on the shower.
I switch the latch and open the back door. Let it slam behind me. Skid down the concrete steps. Standing in the grass, looking up at the oak trees. A canopy of leaves covering the sky.
An ocean of green ivy at my ankles. Wobbly brick steps lead deeper into the yard. I look down at my feet as I maneuver through.
Thick red rope tied onto a plywood two by four. Hooks wedged into the overhanging tree branch. My dad built this swing for me when I was five.
I turn back to the house. The sun has started to set and through the window I see my father turn on a lamp in the living room. I look to the window of my mother’s office. She sits in front of her computer, blue light glowing onto her skin. She switches off the screen and swivels out of her chair. The back door swings open and my dad calls out to me. Dinner’s ready.
I open my eyes. In front of me is the swing again. The piece of wood now coated with a thick layer of ash, the red rope faded and tattered. It’s the only thing I still recognize. There was once a fence that separated our property from our neighbors behind us. Now I can see all the way to the next street. A white pick-up truck drives by.
Looking at the house, a strange skeleton stands before me, made up of steel beams indicating the separation of rooms. The oak trees, black and wiry. Everything has become the same color. Even the same texture.
I can hear my own breath exhale. It gets caught inside my mask and swims up to my goggles, fogging my vision. Looking down at my feet, I trudge back up the broken path.
In between the steel frames, I see the white silhouette of my father in his hazmat suit. He lowers himself through the floor beams into the cavernous pit of rubble. I crouch by the window as he sifts through.
It becomes a search for old curiosities. My dad uncovers something from the ash and carefully places it in my hands. A vase. A mug. A bowl covered in tiny cracks, but still intact. An archaeological dig of our past life.
I have been asked if there is one thing I miss most. An item from the house I wish we had saved. But when I think about taking one thing it feels like ripping a page out of a book.
Home was an entire wall of bookshelves. There were books lining the walls of the living room, of my bedroom, beneath the coffee table. Of painters, photographers, filmmakers, historians.
Home was a long hallway of photographs. Of my grandparents and old city maps. Of pictures my dad shot and developed in his darkroom.
Home was the mountains. Seeing them get closer as we drove home. Watching them turn purple as the sun set. From the kitchen window they felt so near you could almost reach out and touch them.
My dad and I collect our findings and load them into the trunk of the car. We peel off our hazmat suits and gloves and sit in the car for a moment. Parked in the driveway, we stare out at the house.
He begins to imagine what a new home might look like on this same plot of land. Something small and simple. Creative ways to be more sustainable and use new materials. Making sure we still have a view of the mountains.
As we look out at the house, two little birds float down from the avocado tree. In tandem, they fly towards the wide opening in the steel beams, where the window to the living room once was. Seamlessly they fly into the living room and out through the back window into the yard.
My dad drives away and in the passenger seat I close my eyes again.
I return to the house. All of the cabinets and drawers had been opened and so I carefully close them. I take stock of their contents before closing each one. Rubber bands, potato chips, film stock, notebooks. The sun has set, I dim the lights. Testing my memory again, I imagine each light switch, on and off, on and off.
I think about the two little birds. I see them fly through the living room again. Through my bedroom and the bathroom. It’s theirs now.
My dad continues driving through LA traffic. Eventually he is driving me to the airport. My flight back to New York. The city of my separate life.
Weeks later I am standing in the corner of a gallery space in Brooklyn. A show that had taken me weeks to organize. A room of projections showing my mother’s work. I wish she was beside me and not on the other side of the country.
In my pocket, I feel my phone buzz every few minutes. Venmo donations to my hometown as guests arrive.
Playing on the screen is a dancer my mother had choreographed. She’s in our front yard, moving around the bamboo and the avocado trees. The bright blue front door just behind her.
To a friend next to me I whisper, It’s all right there. She smiles, So great you have the videos.
And she’s right. I am lucky for the well of evidence to my memories. But what I meant really was it’s all still there. We see it projected across the wall, but it is also forever inside my head.
Inside my head, I have every birthday party.
I have every fight with my parents. Every time I cried in the shower. Every Christmas morning.
I have every iteration of the house. The different couches and dining room chairs. Every crazy color I painted the walls of my room.
Inside my head, there is a child. In some ways she is me, but in many ways she is not. And I am lucky to have her memories.
Nuala Sanchez is a director, writer, and photographer originally from Altadena, CA and currently based in Brooklyn, NY.
Bio:
Mary Trunk is a multi-media artist formerly based in Altadena, California and now working in Los Angeles. For more than three decades, she has built an eclectic body of work that spans documentaries, dance films, experimental hybrids, site-specific installations, and abstract paintings. Her work is grounded in a deep inquiry into how memory and story intertwine, emphasizing the fluid, shifting nature of recollection and narrative.
Her films explore a wide range of subjects: the unraveling of her own family, the choices women face in balancing motherhood and artistic life, the aging of dancers, meditation practices in prisons, architectural influences, and the complexities of the creative process. Through these intimate portraits, she asks fundamental questions about how we interpret personal histories, navigate choices, and search for meaning.
Mary’s experimental videos and screendances highlight the subtleties of space, relationships, gesture, and movement. By reframing overlooked details of daily life, she transforms the ordinary into something layered and dramatic, revealing contradictions and dimensions we all recognize in our own experiences.
Her work has been presented internationally at festivals, museums, universities, and outdoor venues. She holds a BA in Theater Arts with a Dance Emphasis from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute.
In addition to her personal work, Mary is a full-time faculty member in the Film Department at Mount Saint Mary’s University, where she has produced and directed numerous films documenting the school’s history and its founders. Her most recent project, Mount Saint Mary’s University: 100 Unstoppable Years, a feature-length documentary celebrating the institution’s centennial, premiered on September 18, 2025. She has also taught film production, documentary filmmaking, dance, choreography, and experimental media at Loyola Marymount University, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena City College, and the San Francisco Art Institute.