Ordinal (SW/NE)(2017)

Ordinal is a documentary film exploring Coccidioides immitis, a soil-dwelling fungus that causes valley fever across California's Central Valley. The film weaves together historical, present-day, and mythological perspectives to examine how this pathogen has shaped communities and landscapes. It draws connections between Depression-era migrant hardship, the disease's recent resurgence, climate change theory, and ancient Assyrian wind symbolism. Rather than judging natural phenomena as inherently good or destructive, Ruperto and Keagy's film treats ecological and biological processes with philosophical neutrality, resisting simple binaries of life and death, regeneration and harm. The result is a layered meditation on how invisible forces—fungal, climatic, historical—move through human bodies and societies.