THE SANCTUARY
9 minutes, 2013, HDCAM

THE SANCTUARY is the story of one man’s struggle to repair a destructive and turbulent past.  Larry Henry grew up in a world of poverty, domestic violence, and despair.  As he sees it, the world around him is a reflection of his past—where the primeval forests of Appalachia, and the countless species they once contained, are largely destroyed.  But rather than being paralyzed by his ghosts, Larry embarks on a controversial, decades-long project to restore what has been lost—and in so doing, to redeem his past.  In a land virtually devoid of wilderness, he and some friends begin to buy up private developed land, rip out the houses and roads, and create a new American wilderness where none exists.