Sally Silverstone & Linda Leigh - Biosphere 2

Over twenty years ago, a group of scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers, and free-thinkers put their minds and resources together to create a singular and lasting testament to an unfashionable notion: science and exploration, having become hyper-specialized and incremental, needed a return to big ideas and leaps of faith. They wanted to explore what few were discussing at the time. Things like climate change. Space colonization. And they were going to explore these ideas in a three-acre geodesic living laboratory called Biosphere 2 that mimicked the biomes of the earth. Between 1987 and 1991, they built it from scratch, a veritable ark in the American desert. Eight people sealed themselves inside for two years, harvesting all their food, producing most of their oxygen, and recycling all of their waste. It was a remarkable experiment. And yet the one variable they did not account for was perhaps the most obvious: themselves. Personal and professional infighting, a catastrophic lack of concerted PR, and existential confusion all played a part in writing what is ultimately a tragic tale. Sally Silverstone was the project’s farm manager and crew co-captain during the inaugural – and only full-term – mission. Linda Leigh was the terrestrial wilderness manager. This is both their story, and the story of what Biosphere 2 means for a world where climate change and one-way missions to Mars are no longer newspaper novelties. This is a small movie about a big idea, and two women who helped, and are still helping, to keep it alive.

Directed & Edited by Richard Parks 
Produced by Brady Welch 
Director of Photography: Donavan Sell 
Music by William Ryan Fritch 
Line Producer: Michael MacDonald 
Sally Silverstone interview crew: Keith Pikus & Bennett Barbakow 
Motion Graphics by LukeGraves 
Coloring by Chris Donlon 
Archival Courtesy of Linda Leigh 
Special Thanks to Terri Timely and the University of Arizona