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Recollections of a Pioneer is a lyrical documentary film that highlights the vast, natural beauty of the Big Bend region of west Texas. The main characters are the legendary Hallie Stillwell and the spectacular, remote ranch she came to as a young bride in 1918. Off screen narration and an ethereal music score serve to illuminate and heighten the rich, lingering images that are revealed with a meditative visual and editing style.

“Derek Carroll’s, “Recollections of a Pioneer“, accomplishes something amazing, something pioneer-like of its own. It manages to give us a quiet, almost meditative look into one of the most fascinating places in America, the Big Bend region of Texas. This is rough country. And its people, people like the film’s subject, Hallie Stillwell, had to be tough. But Hallie had a Romantic view of the place and of life. Derek captures this. In fact, he makes us feel it and share it. He doesn’t tell us about it. Instead, he captures the place and the people, quietly, carefully, with reverence. He opens them to us with a delicate touch. Derek’s no foreigner to these parts, and maybe that’s why the film made me feel like I’d lived a 100 years among Hallie and her friends and family in the  wilds of West Texas.”

Glenn W. Smith,
Cultural & political essayist/creator, dogcanyon.org.