Synopsis

Filmmakers Catalina Jordan Alvarez and Simone Barros present two experimental approaches to Ohio history in a program featuring Alvarez’s Sound Spring and a work-in-progress excerpt from Barros’s The Dead Will Show You the Way: A Fugue for Moss and Memory. Sound Spring (78 min., Grasshopper Film, 2025), returning to the community where it was made for its first Yellow Springs screening, explores the centuries-long history of Yellow Springs through eight surreal vignettes in which local residents re-enact and lip-sync their own previously recorded historical and personal stories. Barros’s 15-minute excerpt connects the historical use of forest moss for navigation by people escaping slavery with modern-day efforts to preserve Ohio’s Underground Railroad. A Q&A with directors Simone Barros and Catalina Jordan Alvarez, Producer Matthew Morgan and local interviewees and actors from Sound Spring follows the screening. This event is sponsored by the John G. and Zoe Johnstone Fund at the Columbus Foundation.

Cast

Karen McKee, Rose Pelzl, Charles Arthur Williams, Shane Creepingbear, Anne Bohlen, Donna Denman, Jalyn Roe, Sumayah Chappelle, Rukiya Robertson, Talon Silverhorn, and others

Genre

Documentary

Director

Catalina Jordan Alvarez