A Radical Thread

Doors 7:00p

Program 7:30p

Tickets $12

UnionDocs

352 Onderdonk Ave

Ridgewood, NY

We’re delighted to welcome Jeanne C. Finley for a special screening of her film A Radical Thread , followed by a conversation with filmmaker Lynne Sachs!

In the late 1960s, hundreds of families seeking an alternative to American consumer culture settled on California’s San Juan Ridge, building a back-to-the-land community around principles of collective living and environmental stewardship. Over the decades, they organized against clear-cutting, river damming, and open-pit gold mining, developing models of sustainability and resistance that continue to resonate today. Now, as climate-driven wildfires threaten the region, the community faces an increasingly uncertain future.

A Radical Thread tells this story through an extraordinary 83-foot tapestry, created over seventeen years by Marsha Stone and a collective of artists and community members. Across twelve embroidered panels, the tapestry traces the Ridge’s history of struggle, survival, and collective action. Bringing together archival footage of poet Gary Snyder, reflections from Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan spokesperson Shelly Covert, and the voices of Ridge residents, Finley explores how a community’s history can be stitched together, preserved, and passed on.

Following the screening, Jeanne C. Finley will join Lynne Sachs for a conversation about collaborative storytelling, the relationship between art and environmental activism, and the possibilities of collective memory in the face of ecological change.

Don’t miss it, come through!

Program

A Radical Thread

71 minutes, 2025

A back-to-the-land community fights off corporate Goliaths intent on environmental devastation while using the same collective ethos to stitch an 83-foot tapestry that visualizes their story.

Watch the conversation between Presenter1, Presenter2 and Presenter 3 on the UnionDocs’ Membership hub.

Bios

Jeanne C. Finley is a media artist who works in experimental and documentary forms, including film, video, photography, installation, Internet, and site-specific public works. Her work has been exhibited in such international institutions as the Guggenheim Museum.

Ms. Finley’s recent exhibition, “IMPERFECT CITY, IMPERFECT STATE” was created in collaboration with John Muse and opened at the Delaware Museum of Contemporary art in the spring of 2013. Since 1989 Ms. Finley has worked with Mr. Muse on many installation and video projects, including FLAT LAND (2007), CLOCKWORK (2006), and CATAPULT (2005). In 2005 Finley was an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2001 she received an Arts-Link fellowship to Sarajevo to create THE HOUSE OF DRAFTS, a film and website with Bosnian media artists. During 1990 Finley received a Fulbright Fellowship to Yugoslavia where she directed programs for Radio/TV Belgrade. In 1994 she was an artist-in-residence in Istanbul, Turkey, through a grant from the Lila Wallace…