Film Screening: "Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World"

About this event

Join us for a post-screening discussion with director Sasha Waters.

Mary Oliver was our nation’s unlikely contemporary mystic. Tracking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly 50 years, she opened herself—and her readers—to the known and unknowable world. From a lonely childhood to literary fame, Oliver’s life was shaped by devotion to nature, paying attention, and the long journey toward learning to love and be loved. Her poems speak directly to our anxieties about attention, presence, and the human relationship with the natural world. They inspire people across belief systems and walks of life.

The film features interviews with her close friends, including filmmaker John Waters; never-before-seen personal photos, notebooks, and correspondence from her archive; and recitations of her work by Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi, and Oprah Winfrey. It considers the poet’s long lifetime of work in context, capturing her unique world and the natural beauty that inspired her. (Sasha Waters, 2026, DCP, 91 minutes)

Preceded by one of the many experimental films that Waters quotes in her documentary portrait: Tomo Nishikawa's Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke. Alternating fireworks filmed at a summer festival in Japan, this short creates a distinctive, organic rhythm as well as a gap in time between the visual and sound, both of which are made by the photographic images on the 16mm filmstrip. (2023, 16mm, 6 minutes) With thanks to Canyon Cinema for the loan of their film print.