After about a half dozen portraits in the short form, docu-helmer Ryan Maxey makes the move into feature length terrain with One Road to Quartzsite. Tucked away in the West part of Arizona – a former waterhole of the the late 1880’s now serves as a temporary home for campers — and doubles (as the clip demonstrates) has a place to evade the isolation. A docu-film that perhaps serves as a companion piece to Nomadland, this was produced by Maxey and Josh Polon and executive produced by Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino, Noah Lang and Emily Korteweg. One Road to Quartzsite will have its world premiere at the 2022 edition of Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
It’s late fall in a sleepy desert town in Arizona. Over the course of a few weeks, thousands of snowbirds, retirees, crustpunks, trumpers, loners, and fugitives all descend upon Quartzsite, Arizona. They set up camps, intermingle, and an unlikely community is formed. Some of them bought into the dream and lost everything in the Great Recession. Others dropped out long ago. Now they’re all neighbors on the same piece of dirt.
