Ley Lines

“Taking her own last name as her primary organizing principle in approaching the past, Patricia Gruben has constructed one of the most inventive personal archeologies and family histories ever filmed. Over six years in the making, ‘Ley Lines’ eschews conventional narrative storytelling in favour of associative and cumulative revelation… “Gruben criss-crosses the globe as she traces the Gruben family back to Texas and then to Germany, only to end up in the present in Tuktoyaktuk. Her magical and unpredictable exploration makes innumerable stops along the way to consider such matter as satellites, DNA, geomancy, dowsing, Jimmy Dean, Hitler, the Thule Society, and a tycoon who willed $2 million to a lump of dirt. Gruben’s filmic exploration of the idea of family is illuminating, destabilizing and inclusive. A carefully shaped and resonant work of great imaginative power, ‘Ley Lines’ is guaranteed to fire neurons you didn’t even realize you had.” – David McIntosh, Toronto Festival of Festivals, 1993