Throughout Charlotte Cooley’s Last Days on Lake Trinity you can’t help but notice the bright sun shining. The shimmer coming off of the water almost enhances the glow of the residents who populate the mobile home park in Cooley’s film. Not everything is as sunny as it seems since the owner of the land where these homes sit are set to demolish and then rebuild warehouses leaving little time for the residents to find alternative places to live. You feel a sense of urgency throughout Cooley’s film, as uncertainty looms overhead.
**You can watch Cooley’s film here. Please consider watching it before you watch our interview below.
South Florida is facing a housing crisis, and Cooley reveals just how much quickly she had to get the cameras rolling. In March of 2022, Trinity Broadcasting Network, who owned the land, informed residents of Lakeside Park Estates that they had until December 31, 2022 to move out. Cooley centers on three women–Nancy Sanderson, Laurie Laney, and Nancy Fleishman–as they begin their hunt for another place to live after, it appears, that the county cannot combat TBN’s order.
I don’t know how you can look at these women, and all the people who reside at Lakeside, and simply cast them out. At the beginning of the film, Laney tells us that her first big purchase was her mobile home, but the real sense of belonging came within the community of Lakeside. Community and the collective experience is at the heart of Trinity and found in Cooley’s delicate direction. Fleishman worked off and on for TBN for years, and the silence from the company is troubling, especially when she calls to speak to someone about following up on the help they allegedly said they would provide. In small moments, we hear Fleishman say a quiet prayer or ask for her faith to strengthen her resolve. We cannot help but wonder how she feels rejected or if her prayers are being left unanswered.
We are left to wonder how people measure and consider compassion. Sanderson is struggling with where she places things, and she tells her cat, Foxy, that no matter where she goes, her cat will follow. A smile is almost always on her face, and we worry about her more and more as Cooley spends time with her. The final image of Sanderson will break your heart.
We do not know how much we rely on the sense of home–the unconscious feeling of it, the comfort of it–until it might be taken from you. A home is more than walls, windows, and the place where you store your belongings and memories. I believe that a part of you latches onto the place where you sleep, cry, and find joy. We can all begin again in different parts of the world, but how do we reconcile with the part that has attached itself to home?
Last Days on Lake Trinity is streaming via The New Yorker.
