WOODSRIDER Director/Producer/Editor
82 min / 4K / 2017 Documentary
Tucked in the trees of Oregon’s Mount Hood, an introspective young snowboarder camps alone, anticipating a winter of adventure and self-renewal in this experimental, moody documentary.
Tenacious, 19 year-old Sadie Ford operates within the poetic persona of a searching pioneer. Her footsteps track over the town of Government Camp’s mountain landscape, her dog Scooter her only constant companion. Deep among the Douglas firs Sadie snowshoes to build her nestled tentsite, a place she feels more at ease than anywhere with four walls. Riding sessions and house parties in town provide breaths of social interaction and connection, but otherwise she chooses to spend time in solitude. Sadie’s simple quest for joy is tempered by melancholy when increasingly warm temperatures on the mountain cause rain to replace snow, and the winter season grows shorter. Striking a youthful yet elegiac tone, WOODSRIDER is a meditative film about identity, home, and the way that human experience echoes that of the natural world.
"Some very good docs can be more like director Cambria Matlow’s 'Woodsrider'... Oddly relaxing. A contemplative portrait of a different way to live." Noel Murray, LA Times
“Beautifully and unobtrusively observed homage to the power and melancholy of solitude." Matt Holzman, KCRW
“Matlow's patient, unobtrusive camera and Ford's magnetism as a subject makes Woodsrider one of the most intimate docs you'll see this year. Hauntingly beautiful.”
Walker Macmurdo, Willamette Week
“Like if Frederick Wiseman made a film on a snowboarder.” Steve Kopian, Unseen Films
“Lovely and engrossing. Mixes an ethereal distance with a strange intimacy." Mark Elijah Rosenberg, Rooftop Films
WINNER, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE @ Santa Cruz Film Festival
SCREENINGS Echo Park Film Center Eastern Oregon Film Festival Santa Cruz Film Festival Portland Film Festival NW Filmmakers Festival Boathouse Microcinema Hoffman Arts Center
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