Below Sea Level

190 miles south-east of Los Angeles and 120 feet below sea level, near Salton Sea, in the middle of the desert, on an abandoned army base next to a Air Force bombing practice range, lies the sprawl of Slab City, an immense camp of caravans, tents, mobile homes, dilapidated buses, pick-up trucks and a few shacks. This is the home of a hippie community with no water or electricity supply, or in other words no police or government. These men and women came to the desert to find the inner peace that society refused them. They did not come in search of another world, but of the desert itself. Solitude is at the end of their journey. But it only needs a few photos, a cell phone, an out-of-place word, for the buried past to well up again, and the pain to flow back once more. (Yann Lardeau)