
Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back
2014

The Homestretch
2014

Underwater Dreams
2014

Amanda F***ing Palmer on the Rocks
2014

Grey Gardens
1976

News from a Personal War
1999

The Oldest LESBIAN in the World!
2011

Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime
2014

After Innocence
2005

Pat XO
2013

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream
2004

Uncle Yanco
1967