This 25 minute filmpoem brings together Davis’ creative documentation of the American West and McCracken’s long poem sequence about a shapeshifting wanderer named Gideon Light, also known as Mustang.

Davis’ painterly cinematography features sequences of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains and New Mexico’s White Sands, wild mustangs and Texas windfarms. In verbal counterpoint to the film’s visual dynamic, McCracken reads a selection of poems from the sequence. The highways and railroads, desert mesas and abandoned houses Davis captures are at once dreamscape and hyper-reality, a record of locations and lifestyles that are being radically altered by industrialisation and climate change. As exterior counterpart to the interior journey made by Mustang in McCracken’s poetry, these landscapes confront viewers with dramatic, unsettling physical environments.

Beautifully shot and featuring stunning landscapes, the film also includes an original score composed by John T. Davis, performed by Davis on guitar and Colin Henry on dobro.

This screening coincides with an exhibition of the same name, taking place at Ulster University's Belfast Campus, from 14 March to 16 April. More information can be found here.