Old Post Road is an experimental film collaboration between Marie Lynn Haas and Tori Lawrence. The two-channel film blends present-day Super 8mm film with 8mm archival film footage from the 1950s and 60s. Like many early home movies, Marie’s family's footage unfolds like a dream. It’s linear in that we can track the passing of time, the seasons are constantly changing, and people are aging, but the story is still fragmented. It’s Christmas over and over again, unrecognizable faces appear, and the scenes come and go in a blur. Even those who can identify some of the who, what, where, when, or why are left stringing their own narratives together. Marie and Tori watched the footage repeatedly over several years as part of their filming and editing process. Each viewing allowed them to see something different. The film was sometimes familiar, like déjà vu, yet it was still as puzzling as a labyrinth.

The act of watching it again and again was like trying to remember a dream. When we dream, we sew little bits and pieces of images together to make meaning out of them, but that doesn’t mean they make sense. Instead, dreams remind us of nonsensical possibilities and the enchantment of not knowing. In the end, we are not meant to have all the answers, and forcing cohesion is like trying to sift fog. The more sense one tries to make of it, the more illogical it becomes. The more we uncover, the less we know—therein lies the heartbeat of this inquiry.

The present-day footage is a recreation of the memories and dreams shared between Marie and her grandmother. The sound weaves music by Jeroen Diepenmaat with fragments of audio recordings of the Cummington Fair and conversations of Marie, Grant, and Patsy Knapp. In the end, the film became a form of kinkeeping–albeit a messy kind of kinkeeping–one that allows for adaptation and change, knowing that one day the story will shift again.