Scotia.  Darwin. Calico.  Kaweah.  Never heard of these towns?  That’s because they aren’t there.  The people who once lived in these abandoned company towns peppering the California countryside pinned their hopes for the future on local resources: ore, oil, lumber, aerospace engineering, tourism, even Japanese internment facilities.  But when the industries went bust, the people vanished too, leaving only the wind to whistle through the shattered windows and crevices of the crumbling structures that remained.  These abandoned homes and storefronts are the only remnants of a shared dream of prosperity and privilege.  Combining contemporary and archival footage, this meditative film unfolds as a series of portraits of uniquely American spaces, where a mishmash of kitsch and cultural detritus meets the natural majesty of the West in a haunting evocation of a faded economic frontier.  California Company Town is a film for our time.  TW