Green desert

William Least Heat-Moon, author of PrairyErth ( 1991) — a nonfiction, deep-map “survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains” — wrote that “most prairie life is within the place: under the stems, below the turf, beneath the stones. The prairie is not a topography that shows its all but rather a vastly exposed place of concealment…” Originally a Geographic Information Science term, deep mapping is also defined as a way to “visualise the multiple identities that go towards constructing the human experience of place.” (“Deep Mapping”) Green Desert, a feature-length experimental documentary, is a deep-map in motion, juxtaposing the remnant but overgrazed prairies of eastern Kansas for the overgrown ditches, cropland prairie strips, and postage stamp-size preserves of Iowa — my current, though temporary, home — a state that was once 80% prairie and now, only 0.1%. While the title nods to the endless acres of monoculture crops that have almost wholly replaced the prairie, the film grieves for this vibrant ecoregion while pointedly preserving it through original video, archival media, animation, satellite imagery, The Smithsonian’s Botany Collections, and experimental techniques like pressing biospecimens onto clear 16mm film leader.