Ida Western Exile, Courtney Stephens

Ida Western Exile, Courtney Stephens from OPR on Vimeo.

Ida Western Exile explores risk, the West, and the performance of solitude. The film was shot at Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico, the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe, and on Amtrak.

The film is named for Georgia’s little-known painter sister, Ida, whom Georgia once called “a waste.” Our contemporary Ida negotiates a possible disappearance with the help of a global customer support team, while freight trains loaded with Chinese goods race across a New Mexico landscape that once represented creative exile. In phone calls with places like Expedia, Kraft, and a Doomsday Preppers Emporium, she compulsively gathers information for a future move (or an internet-fueled delusion) with moments of oblique connection.