“The Hobbit Hole offered a vantage from which to see the individualistic, human-centric culture I live in. This story of coming together is a remembrance of community – a community that includes many generations and the more-than-human world, strengthened by the sweat of building and using a sauna.”

Follow a community at The Hobbit Hole as people from Alaska gather to build an on-site sauna together. Creating something more enduring than a structure, this short film celebrates sauna culture as a means of strengthening community, exploring the synergy between the forces and resources of the natural landscape, and those who seek to maintain it and learn from it.

Filmmaker, Taliesin Black-Brown explores sauna culture and community over the build of an on-site sauna at environmental field school The Hobbit Hole located on the Inian Islands in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness, set against the largest protected area on the planet. As part of the Tidelines Institute, the community that converges here seeks to combat the climate crisis through education and collective efforts, coming together by sharing responsibilities and knowledge under the influence of the rich ecosystem that surrounds them.

Travelling the Alaskan coastline and the most snow-covered mountain range on earth by seaplane, the crew landed at The Hobbit Hole as the build commenced. As participants collaborate to create something intended to be used by hundreds of people they would never meet, the film hones in on the architecture of community and the shared philosophy that underlies it. An extension of the sauna itself, Sauna Channel seeks to educate and immerse viewers in this singular experience, where maintaining one foot in the old and one in the new can initiate powerful change.