Pilgrim unfolds as a dreamlike pilgrimage across the United States tracing sites of radical generosity and creativity that have come to inspire Cauleen Smith. These include Alice Coltrane-Turiyasangitananda’s ashram, Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers and the Watervliet Shaker Historic District, the site of the country’s first Shaker community. A live recording of Alice Coltrane’s 1978 jazz piano composition “One for the Father” accompanies the film’s ethereal lyricism.

Cauleen Smith is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores Afrofuturism, spiritualism, utopianism and Black creativity in equally powerful and poetic ways.