16mm and 4K video, color, sound, 9:05, 2025

For best audio experience please wear headphones. (binaural mix)

This short film is about the first manned balloon flight in the United States, in 1793, when the country was only 17 years old. The aeronaut (balloonist) for this adventure was the celebrated Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard. The idea that the 18th century United States was empty territory to be overtaken by settlers was, in part, supported by the new technology of balloon flight. The film carries us along with the story of Blanchard’s famous journey but by the end we find ourselves in contemplation of a five-hundred year old oak tree called the Clement Oak that sits, damaged from climate-catastrophic storms, behind a Walmart Supercenter in New Jersey. Blanchard’s flight is described in Journal of my 45th Ascension, Being the First Performed in America, on the 9th of January 1793.

Production, Camera, Sound, Edit: Jenny Perlin

Drone cinematography: A1RMedia, Philadelphia

Sound mix: Paul Hill, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio

Color: Francisco Acosta

Support provided by the Oslo National Academy of Art, The New School and The Cooper Union, New York and the Film/Video Studio at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio