Cloudy Ridge Productions

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Award-Winning Documentaries Focused on

Preservation...

Professional Aerial, Landscape, & Time Lapse Cinematography

Check Out Cloudy Ridge Productions Vimeo Webpage

Award-Winning Documentaries Focused on

Preservation...

Professional Aerial, Landscape, & Time Lapse Cinematography

Check Out Cloudy Ridge Productions Vimeo Webpage

About Us

CLOUDY RIDGE PRODUCTIONS

Cloudy Ridge Productions is a non profit, Fiscally Sponsored, filmmaking company that specializes in documenting people and places in the Four Corners area of southwestern United States.

Our media captures the stunning landscape and fascinating people closely connected to the land through award-winning digital landscape and time-lapse cinematography, photography, and interviews.

On the Autumnal Equinox in 2019, The National Geographic Channel featured our time-lapse of Chaco Canyon on the world-televised special, “Chasing the Equinox”. The special featured our friend and colleague Anna Sofaer, President of the Solstice Project and re-discoverer of the Sun Dagger Petroglyph on Fajada Butte.

We continue our part in preserving and protecting the Four Corners landscape and the Indigenous Peoples who have made this area their homeland for tens of thousands of years.

At Cloudy Ridge Productions, we cater to your media needs; from custom created documentaries to stock material, including all landscape photography, cinematography, and time-lapse footage specific to the Four Corners area.

The Cloudy Ridge Productions Team

Larry Ruiz - Owner/Director/Producer

Larry Ruiz is a non-profit filmmaker living in Durango, Colorado creating unique, timely, and engaging films and documentaries to show how important the ancient civilizations and their modern descendants of the southwestern United States are, and that it is still possible to protect what little of this early culture is left.

In the 1990’s, during production of the popular Chaco Canyon documentary, The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, directed and produced by Anna Sofaer and narrated by Robert Redford, Ruiz volunteered as location scout, assistant camera, grip, surveyor, and other various duties over the seven-year production of this film. Larry still works closely with Anna Sofaer, helping to film and document some of her ongoing Chaco research work.

In 2012, Larry Ruiz directed and produced his debut film, “Death of Place”. The core message of the film was the importance of individual responsibility and stewardship of archaeologically significant sites.

“Waking the Mammoth” premiered in 2014 and was Larry Ruiz’s second directorial work. Filming the winter solstice burning of a wooden mammoth built in Bluff, Utah by local artist Joe Pachak and other community members, this ritual was woven into the intricate fabric of significant archaeological discoveries in the region dating back as far as 13,000 years. The film was awarded Best in Show, Gold Award, & Best Documentary at the Colorado Trindie Film Festival. At the Depth of Field Independent Film Festival, Waking the Mammoth received the Merit Award for Outstanding Cinematography.

In 2017, Ruiz directed, co-produced, and edited 23 documentaries for the preservation series, “The Greater Chaco Landscape”, working closely with Drs. Steve Lekson, Ruth Van Dyke, Carrie Heitman, Dine, (Navajo), and Acoma Pueblo Chaco scholars, along with the National Park Service.

In 2018, Ruiz co-produced and edited a short film with Solstice Project founder Anna Sofaer titled, “A Sacred Line-scape Unites the Four Corners”.

In March of 2019, Larry worked with the National Geographic Network in Chaco Canyon on the world premiere of the National Geographic Channel television show titled, “Chasing the Equinox”. Ruiz’s award-winning time-lapse was featured on the Chaco Canyon segment of that program supporting Anna Sofaer’s interview and discoveries.

Early in 2019 Cloudy Ridge Productions completed the two-time, award-winning feature-length Navajo weaving film titled, “Spider Woman’s Web”. At the Durango International Film Festival, the film was awarded the Best Native Cinema Award. At the Nederland International Film Festival, we received the Best Film Editing Award.

In August of 2019, Ruiz was again asked to direct, co-produce, and edit the second part of the “Greater Chaco Landscape-Indigenous Perspectives” featuring Hopi and Zuni interviews in Chaco Canyon. Larry edited, directed, and co-produced an additional five documentaries from this effort that were completed in early, 2020. As a result of this collaborative filming effort, a documentary short featuring the Hopi Tribe titled, “Yupkӧyvi-The Place Beyond the Horizon” was edited for film festivals and is gaining popularity by being accepted into the NativeSkins Festival in Los Angeles, The American Indian Festival in San Francisco, The Santa Fe Film Festival, and The Durango Independent Film Festival, and other potential festivals across the continent.

2016-Present, we are working on a series of vignettes titled “The Languages of the Landscape”. Each film addresses a specific regional archaeological preservation issue across the Four Corners area of the Southwestern United States, including the content of this present proposal.

Photo by Aaron O'Brien

Learn more

Davd Valentine–Director of Cinematography/Producer

Davd Valentine came of age exploring the mountains and deserts of Utah and the greater West. After discovering the fascinating field of Archeoastronomy, Davd embarked on a quest, seeking to explore and experience the mysteries of cultural astronomy sites in the American southwest, and around the world. This journey through time and space has been the foundation for the Axis Mundi documentary film project. For more than a decade Davd has been documenting archeoastronomy sites at the specific time of their intended function, largely the winter/summer solstices and the vernal/autumnal equinoxes. This ongoing effort to capture these "celestial alignments", along with the varying stories associated with the archaeological sites and the researchers whose work is highlighted, will result in a one of a kind documentary series on the astronomy of culture and locale.

Davd studies the cinema arts, receiving a Bachelor's degree in Digital Media from Utah Valley University in 2016. He has directed several short films, including Sun Marker (2014), and Z0ZZ (2014); as well as serving as Director of Photography on a number of film projects including: Waking the Mammoth (2015), Zion Curtain (2017), Spider Woman's Web (2019), and Yupkoyvi: The Place Beyond the Horizon (2020).

Davd Valentine and Director Larry Ruiz met serendipitously on the 2012 winter solstice during the Bluff, Utah mammoth burning and formed a deep friendship and filmmaking collaboration that has lasted through the years. Davd brings professionalism and expert filmmaking to the highest level for Cloudy Ridge Productions’ documentaries. We are pleased to co-produce this present film with Davd and again, assigning him as Director of Photography and Cinematography.

Jaquie Gipson – Musical Soundtrack Creator

Colorado native Jaquie Gipson has been composing and performing music for over 40 years. As a master finger-style guitarist, she regularly performs for many music festivals yearly in addition to conducting numerous guitar workshops.

Her music has been featured in a number of documentaries and several Cloudy Ridge Productions documentaries including award-winners Waking the Mammoth, and Spider Woman’s Web, the widely popular Death of Place, The Language of the Landscape series, and several other Cloudy Ridge Productions films. Jaquie’s music has also been featured in the documentary Women of the Land, which won the 2013 Spirit of Activism award at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival and she has performed in many other videos.

Jaquie Gipson’s music creates images that takes the listener on a journey of their choosing. Her brilliant melodic work engages the audience with intimate ballads that embody intriguing mystery. Put a guitar in her hands and she will tell you a story not with words but with music.

We are extremely pleased that Jaquie continues to compose hauntingly stunning and melodic guitar music for our documentaries. Listen to some of her beautiful unique work here.

Aaron O'Brien - Photography

Aaron is a native of Southwest Colorado where he began exploring the canyons and mesas of the 4 Corners region as a young boy with his parents. He started volunteering at what was formerly the Anasazi Heritage Center at the age of 5 where he developed a passion for archeology which has persisted to this day.

After working several years in the professional archeology field, he turned his attention to photography and educating visitors on the importance of preserving these special places and landscapes. Combing his love of photography, archaeology, and archeoastronomy, Aaron uses his camera to try and capture what remains of this sacred landscape and the people that occupied it for thousands of years.

Cloudy Ridge Productions uses Aaron’s beautiful landscape images to convey the importance of preservation and culture in our films.

(Photo by Aaron O'Brien)

Cloudy Ridge Productions Time Lapse Demo Reel

Music by Southern Culture on the Skids, "El Mysterismo"

Yupkӧyvi-The Place Beyond the Horizon - Official Trailer

In “Yupkӧyvi - The Place Beyond the Horizon”, the Hopi explain the clear and persistent threats of encroaching fracking, and oil and gas exploration upon their ancient Chaco Canyon homeland, (Yupkӧyvi), and the need to preserve not only Chaco Canyon proper but the entire greater Chaco landscape.

Waking the Mammoth (Full Feature)

To view the full feature length film,

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n the fall of 2012, Bluff, Utah artist Joe Pachak and friends created a full-size mammoth made of local wood materials. They built this in order to not only commemorate a 12,000 plus year old petroglyph discovered by Joe Pachak himself, but to commemorate the people then and now with a conveyance of community and sustainability. Then on on the Winter Solstice of that same year, December 21, shortly after 8 p.m. flaming atlatl darts were shot at the wooden mammoth celebrating the burning of this amazing piece of art representing deep history, community, and sustainability...then and now.

Waking the Mammoth documents and honors the mammoths and ancient peoples that roamed North America tens of thousands of years ago. Initially, an in depth comparative look at climatic and animal extinction issues 13,000 years ago versus today is documented. As the film progresses, the viewers are asked how they can instill in their own children and peers “a sense of proportion and a sense of gravity of loss” not only for the endangered species on our planet but the sensitive climate that both seem at risk today.

A Film by

Larry Ruiz

Director of Photography

Davd Valentine

Featuring: Craig Childs, Rich Friedman, Winston Hurst, Ray Kenny, Joe Pachak,

Don Simonis, Scott Thybony, Jonathan Till

Music by:

NESS, Sacred Spirit, Jaquie Gipson, Robert Mirabal, Moby

Death of Place

To view the full feature length film,

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“…I am older and uglier

and full of the knowledge

that I do not belong to beauty

and beauty does not belong to me.

I have learned to accept

whatever men choose to give me

or whatever they choose to withhold,

but oh my desert

yours is the only death I cannot bear.” - 'Requiem for Sonora' by Richard Shelton

Cloudy Ridge Productions presents an important and timely film about archaeological preservation. Interviewee's include archaeologists Jonathan Till, Winston Hurst, literary scholar Craig Childs, Navajo historian Clyde Benally, Laguna Puebloan Patricia Sandoval, geologist/archaeologist Rich Friedman, and rock art expert Joe Pachak. Copyright 2015 Cloudy Ridge Productions

Music by:

Jaquie Gipson http://jaquiegipson.com/

Moby http://www.moby.com/

Archaeologist Winston Hurst, Twin Narrative

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Languages of the Landscape - Places in Time

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Archaeologists Steve Lekson, Jesse Tune, and Jonathan Till, along with acclaimed author Craig Childs give their take on ancient cultures' concept of time.

Languages of the Landscape - The Cedar Mesa Perishables Project

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Dr. Laurie Webster heads up the The Cedar Mesa Perishables Project. The Project was established in 2011 to document the 4,000 mostly unpublished textiles, baskets, wooden implements, and hide and feather artifacts excavated from dry caves in the Greater Cedar Mesa area during the 1890s. Now housed in six museums across the United States, the artifacts are associated with the Basketmaker (200 BC-500 AD) and Ancestral Pueblo (500-1300 AD) archaeological cultures.

Photo at right by Aaron O'Brien

Languages of the Landscape - Ridges Basin & Lake Nighthorse, Durango, Colorado

To play the video,

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Archaeologists describe the People that occupied Ridges Basin, (present -day Lake Nighthorse), 1000 years ago. Featuring Dr. Steve Lekson and Jason Chuipka.

Durango, Colorado US 550/160 Intersection Sculpture

Filmed in Durango, Colorado

Aerial Bluff Greathouse

Filmed in Bluff, Utah

OUR LATEST PROJECTS

Overshoot & Collapse in the Ancient Four Corners

"Overshoot & Collapse in the Ancient Four Corners Area” is an ambitious series of documentary vignettes, ranging in runtimes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, targeted for PBS and film festivals featuring some of the most prominent archaeological specialists in the United States.

The series of documentaries takes the viewer on a new and intimate journey from the beginnings of sedentism in the Pueblo I landscape near Durango, Colorado, USA, to aggregation and depopulation of the Chaco Canyon, New Mexico landscape, (Pueblo II period), then north the Aztec, New Mexico, (Pueblo II and Pueblo III periods). We will also explore the region south into Arizona and southern New Mexico to the Mimbres Valley.

Compelling new research will be supported by ancient oral histories still being expressed by the modern indigenous relatives of these ancient cultures and will tell a new story that few are aware. These stories and supporting research are interspersed with a beautiful soundtrack and stunning visual cinematography, including aerial and time-lapse footage of New Mexico and southwestern Colorado.

By revisiting these oral stories with ambitious current research through a modern lens, the series of films will provide an extraordinary opportunity to preserve ancient cultural stories that are backed with modern scientific research.

Please click on the image above to view the project trailer.