Centred on sphagnum moss, Translocations highlights the mutual aid and reciprocal exchange that exists between species in the restoration of a lowland peatbog. Featuring the voice of botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, and a tactile soundtrack score, the film documents the human and more-than-human life, energies and actions that are transforming a nature-depleted, terrestrial environment back into a flourishing wetland habitat. The film is structured around volunteers moving ('translocating') gathered balls of sphagnum moss from replete to deplete areas of the bog, enabling a keystone species in peat formation and carbon sequestration to thrive and rejuvenate a vital part of the biosphere.
Exploring the luminous and vivid characteristics of this rewilded, transitional terrain, the film depicts the abundance of re-introduced sphagnum moss and the dynamic mosaic of co-dependent species that are now thriving both above and below the surface of the bog, from flowering cotton grasses and carnivorous sundews to dragonflies and silk-moths.
A film by Nick Jordan
Soundtrack score by Otis Jordan
Voice: Robin Wall Kimmerer, from podcast On Being with Krista Tippett
Underwater sound recordings by Tracy Hill, with Phil Phelps
With thanks to:
All staff and volunteers at Lancashire Wildlife Trust;
Robin Wall Kimmerer; Andrea Prevost and Krista Tippett at the On Being Project