Spirit of Place

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.

Jonathan is a young man with a strange condition that only his brother understands. But when he begins to yearn for a different life, their unique bond becomes increasingly tested.

A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.

A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.

Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.

Widower Tom, on the recent passing of his wife Mary, uses his free bus pass to travel the length of Britain from John O'Groats in Caithness to Land's End in Cornwall, their shared birthplace, using only local buses. It's an incident-fuelled nostalgia trip and his encounters with local people make him a media phenomenon. Tom is totally unaware and to his surprise on arrival at Land’s End he’s greeted as a celebrity.

On Christmas Eve, a fighter pilot on his way home becomes lost while flying over water and needs a miracle to land safely.

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.