“With Windward, Lockhart continues to refine her thematic interest in the smallness of humanity against the enormity of nature.”
Sharon Lockhart’s newest film Windward, which played in this year’s New York Film Festival’s Currents section, is a quiet and monumental work composed of twelve square static shots depicting children interacting with the natural beauty on Fogo Island off of Newfoundland’s northeastern coast. The film can at first seem simple or even mundane, with human figures placed within vast landscapes as a static camera watches them interact with the environment. However, in Lockhart’s hands this simplicity becomes rigorous and poetic as she adds vibrant sounds of waves crashing, grass bending, and children shouting to create a deeply visceral experience.
Lockhart’s cinema has always been one of duration. Her films are filled with long static shots that allow her to create images that hold infinite depth. These long takes can test many viewers, but those that become transfixed with her images, sounds, and themes are highly rewarded. Windward showcases Lockhart’s interests and themes, continuing her use of long static takes, square framing, and architectural precision that she honed through years of filmmaking and photography. With Windward, Lockhart continues to refine her thematic interest in the smallness of humanity against the enormity of nature.
Windward can also be seen as homage, not only to Lockhart’s mentor James Benning, whose influence remains undeniable in the stillness, framing, and relationship between camera and land, but to Colin Low’s 1967 The Children of Fogo Island, which Lockhart encountered during her 2022 residency with Fogo Island Arts. Low filmed local children living and playing on the island decades ago. Lockhart returns not to replicate but to respond, to see what remains, what has changed, and what continues. At many times, it can be seen as a picture of how humanity has changed, but how much it remains the same. The presence of youth climbing on rocks, yelling toward the wind, and disappearing behind dunes becomes a bridge between times, as while society has evolved, the core of humanity remains the same.
Across the twelve shots, no modern technology appears. No phones, screens, or computers disrupt the organic rhythms of the wind, tide, voices, and light. What emerges feels almost utopian, or perhaps prelapsarian. It’s not nostalgia or romanticization, but a reminder that human life once felt slower, more spatially aware, and embedded in places. Windward becomes a study of how people inhabit land rather than extract from it and how nature sets the terms of existence rather than serving as a resource or a forgotten part of our existence.
Each image fades to black before the next, giving the viewer the chance to breathe, recalibrate, and let go of narrative expectation. There’s no traditional story and no explanation, but instead there are frames that invite and require attention. The first shot sets the tone of the film. Two children appear near the coast, vanish for a moment behind a ridge, and reappear, swallowed and returned by the landscape. The wind pushes the tall grass in waves, the coastline stretches into the distance, the sky is deeply blue. Already, the film presents a world in which nature is the center of the film and humans only inhabit it as supporting characters. In another frame, children drag something across a rocky island using a rope. A single shouted “Wait for me!” cuts through sea and wind, the first and only audible human language in the film. The camera remains still, unjudging, resisting zoom or narrative intrusion. Lockhart trusts the world to express itself without intervention.
A later shot presents an older child or a woman sitting on rocks overlooking a bay or the ocean. Her blouse and hair whip in the wind. The entire color palette shifts when a cloud passes overhead. The greens darken, the blues mute, and the rocks breathe with moisture as the lighting changes. Windward becomes not only a film about human beings in nature, but a film about how light, color, and weather interact with the human experience and the geography of nature.
Lockhart’s compositions acknowledge human fragility and our presence in a greater world. One shot features a small boy flying a kite while being dwarfed by a massive rock formation, another shows children navigating dunes that seem older than memory, and a third shows a boy falling repeatedly off handmade stilts outside a red building. Each illustrates how humans are insignificant and humbled by the enormity of the world and yet are filmed with great reverence.
One of the most startling shots of the film shows a girl feeding what feels like dozens upon dozens of seagulls on a brown rock jetty. Their screeching ruptures the serenity that preceded it and suddenly sound becomes heightened. The gulls swarm after she leaves, as if longing for her return. For the first time, human action appears consequential, shaping the landscape rather than merely existing within it.
After this comes a stunning sunset centered shot with a house perched on the water’s edge. Orange and violet hues reflect across a bay’s glassy stillness while two boys float in the water as the sun disappears. The tranquility of the moment feels almost mythic. After nearly an hour of wind, sea, and distance, this shot arrives like an emotional release.
The final and twelfth frame juxtaposes harshly with the serene shot before it. Lockhart shows the roughest waters in her final moments. A woman dives from a cliff into a wild ocean, following two swimmers ahead. They make their way toward distant rock islands. Their actions feel dangerous and exhilarating and present humanity’s connection to the world.
Lockhart’s static camera refuses to instruct viewers what to feel or how to interpret the shots. Her commitment to long takes resists distraction culture and attention spans. Instead, Windward asks the viewer to slow down and to experience time the way the winds and waves do, and also to observe how humans used to live in slower, less technologically addictive times.
Some viewers will undoubtedly find Windward too minimal, too mundane, and too static. But for those willing to meet it where it stands, the film becomes transcendent and calming. Windward ultimately reminds us that humans are temporary, while landscapes and nature endure. Houses will erode, leaves will return every season, and waves will always reshape the shore. In an era defined by speed, noise, and disconnection, Windward is a rare film. It asks us not to escape the world but to notice and listen to it.
Image copyright: Sharon Lockhart