I Know What I Saw
2018
16mm to digital
15 minutes



“Charting a cross country journey through rodeos, deserts, and motels, “I Know What I Saw,” is a poetic travelogue of American landscapes and small encounters. Directed by Gillian Waldo, who narrates a series of postcards addressed to someone named “N” — detailing low-key run-ins with cops and park rangers, eating food from gas stations and casinos, and watching cowboys tie down calves — the film is presented largely as a 16mm slide show. The images are gorgeous and the tone meditative. It’s also quite distinct in its whispered cynicism. Waldo speaks of a land of “junkies drift(ing) through parking lots all night slamming doors,” and unexploded ordnance in the Badlands (“this land is disposable, and so are you”). All the while, she reckons with her solitude and her relationship with N waiting for her (or not) at home, and ultimately wonders where the trip has actually led her, if anywhere. And yet, the splendor of the landscapes remain.”
- NoBudge


2020 Baltimore Museum of Art
Screening Room
2018 Winnipeg Underground Film Festival
2018 James River Film Festival 
* First Place
NoBudge