Rating: NR | Runtime: 89 minutes
Director(s): G. Anthony Svatek
Writer(s): G. Anthony Svatek

If I followed your name and became your eyes, could I stitch you back together?

No one has had more named after him on Earth than Alexander von Humboldt, yet few people know who he was. I had zero clue despite living in a suburb of Buffalo, NY—a city where the Kensington Expressway was literally carved out of Humboldt Parkway, destroying a serenely green portion of the region to ease automotive travel and increase air pollution in the 1960s. To me it was just a name like any other. To filmmaker G. Anthony Svatek it’s a scientific legacy.

His essay film Humboldt USA is therefore a way into how the 19th century German “queer naturalist and visionary ecologist” impacted spaces well outside the realm of his studies and era. Svatek focuses on three American namesakes to do so: Nevada’s Humboldt County, California’s Humboldt Redwoods, and Buffalo’s Humboldt Parkway. Using the scientist’s own anti-colonial words about “interconnectedness” and nature, we glimpse inside their respective histories.

It’s an intriguing experiment wherein Humboldt becomes a thematic through line if not the actual subject himself. Svatek is extrapolating via hypothetical questions to discover if people in power might have utilized Humboldt’s concepts to enact policies and actions that went against his ethos. How the results might therefore prove antithetical to him despite becoming synonymous via a shared name. And how people strive to counter the damage wrought today.

You have cowboy environmentalists rescuing bighorn sheep to reintroduce them into Nevada reservations. Chris Birke and Emily Soward use machine learning technology to better connect to the Redwood ecosystem as a means of “talking to the trees” despite that same technology exacerbating mankind’s isolationism and the destruction of forests. And Buffalonians Terry Robinson and Marcia Ladiana fighting New York’s “toxic tunnel” project.

Svatek moves back and forth in a constant rhythm to create a three-act triptych. First, we meet those in each place from Nevada to California to Buffalo. Then we learn a bit about their process to enact change in the same order. And, finally, we find ourselves facing the potential impact of their work. Nevada shows actual results. California progresses to a point where the idea might bear fruit. And Buffalo reminds us how the machine is often still stronger than our idealism.

There are also some supporting characters adding personality on a smaller scale like Buffalo’s Angel Artis working and teaching at the local Science Museum and Redwoods park ranger Griff Griffith having a lot of fun making TikToks to try and breakthrough the algorithm to reach a new generation of environmentalists. The latter epitomizes Svatek’s thesis in many ways by exposing how social media’s ability to connect the world is throttled for capitalist gains.

Humboldt USA proves a fascinating work that seeks to have its audience ask their own questions about what’s on-screen and similar happenings they might have seen themselves. It asks us to look beyond the simplicity of a “good” idea (putting a roof over the Kensington to restore green space) and consider whether the ramifications are worse (even higher pollution). Where does progress become exploitation? When is a name not just a name?

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A scene from HUMBOLDT USA; courtesy of Space Time Films.