Project Summary
Mothersbane will be a twenty-minute personal documentary that recounts my ambivalent relationship to my mother’s physical disabilities and chronicles my attempts to be at peace with her suffering and disfigurement. It is a mixed-media portrait, alternating between the present – in which my mother battles a staph infection and prepares for a major surgery – and my recollections of the past. The film draws upon a variety of poetic evocations, from Super 8 recreations of childhood memories to scenes from 1980s science-fiction films, to express the love and anxiety, and the protectiveness and dread, that has defined my relationship with my mother.
As a filmmaker, I am interested in representations of bodies and of intimacy, as well as exploring the aesthetic margins of documentary filmmaking. I hope to contribute films that foster an appreciation for both the internal and for the sensual; films that speak to base emotions in an articulate manner. My films have focused on personal relationships – lovers, families – and attempted to tease apart tightly wound emotions to expose the vulnerable, difficult, and unspoken. My stories have tended toward acts of cowardice and moments of vulnerability, but have also examined the swelling of pride and how we nurture the bonds of trust.
I am inspired by Werner Herzog’s pursuit of ‘ecstatic truths’ and by the lyrical documentaries of Alain Resnais. I am also compelled by the tactile imagery of Claire Denis and her cinematographer, Agnes Godard. These filmmakers have explored experiential means of engaging an audience, embodying Pasolini’s ideal of a “Cinema of Poetry.” I hope my work can contribute in this vein, exploring intimate relationships by sharing tactile, poetic experiences.
I knew my preoccupation with mother’s scars and mobility meant that Mothersbane would be the rare documentary shot on film. The footage of my mother’s therapy and convalescence has a clean, direct and intimate immediacy; sustained shots of the textured landscapes of her body are my efforts to confront that which, in the past, I have avoided. These contemplative moments will be a leaping off point for memories of how I dealt with my anxieties in the past.
These memories will be recreated through a variety of stylized efforts. Memories from my early childhood are recreated in Super 8 sequences that favor close-ups and dreamy slow motion, capturing the distilled quality of a memory. Teenage recollections will be given voice by reconstituted ‘captures’ of the 1980s science fiction films that spoke to me. ‘Punching in’ on an old TV, often slowing down the action, I filmed the threadbare VHS cassettes of my youth – films with capable female heroines, like Aliens and The Terminator – and isolated scenes that reflected my anxiety about my mother’s fragile, increasingly-hybridized body.
The present day film footage and stylized recreations will be blended together with still photographs and x-rays from my mother’s medical dossier, family photos spanning the past sixty years, and clips from old home movies. When appropriate, these elements will be given a more subjective perspective. For example, a still image history of my mother’s childhood battles with hip dysplasia will be a three-dimensional Viewmaster sequence, my favorite childhood toy.
Editing will prioritize juxtaposing the present with memories of the past – brought to life by the contrasts in image format. I intend to give shots and scenes ‘room to breathe,’ and envision a spare sound design for the present-day material, and a scored, artificial complement in the recreations. Title cards will relay pertinent medical updates, while my voiceover relates more personal observations.
Mothersbane will be completed in early 2009. Archival materials - home movies and medical records, as well as stylized ‘captures’ from selected science-fiction films - were collected in early 2008. Filming began in January 2008 and has continued in intervals through the present, with the intention of finishing in September/October 2008.
Story Summary
Note: Roughly two-thirds of filming for Mothersbane has been completed. The film’s narrative structure has undergone a number of revisions as unforeseen medical complications altered both the story of my mother’s recovery and my relationship to her struggle. Most notably, she has taken two very bad falls - resulting in broken bones and more surgeries - that prolonged her recovery time and shifted my expectations for her recovery from ‘fixing her’ to simply ‘coping.’ I make this note to state what may be an obvious documentary conceit: my mother’s goal of freestanding mobility is not yet complete, thus the arc I have depicted below is subject to change.
Mothersbane begins as my mother recovers from her most recent surgery, uncertain if she will walk again. I have come home to be with her and my father, to help with her therapy, and to make this film. Mothersbane has two interwoven narrative threads: 1) a contemplation of my mother’s medical struggles in the present, which provides an opportunity to 2) consider how I have coped with my mother’s trauma in the past. The second narrative, a revisiting of memories, will touch upon two distinct time periods: my early childhood, when I first came to understand my mother as suffering, ‘broken’, vulnerable, mortal; and early teenage years, when my father introduced me to the science-fiction genre, and I found characters and narratives that helped negotiate the confusion and anxiety I had about my mother’s body.
The first ‘act’ of the film serves to familiarize the audience with my mother’s medical condition, using intimate images of her physical therapy and a combination of title cards (for medical information) and voiceover (for more personal insights): she was born with hip dysplasia, has undergone more than twenty surgeries since the age of five, has been in and out of wheelchairs all of her life, and is battling a persistent staph infection that may prevent her from ever walking again.
Simultaneously, while the audience is being introduced to my mother’s medical struggles, Super 8 recreations of my earliest memories reveal how I was first introduced to the idea of my mother as disabled. For instance, I remember thinking boys always put girls socks on for them - perhaps because their feet were shaped differently - before I realized my mother could not do this herself and that her feet had warped under the pressure of her awkward gait. I also recall thinking my mother was superior to other boy’s mothers because of the toys that she came with – crutches, artificial hips (that I mistook for fighting blades), and shoehorns shaped like swords.
As I came to understand that my mother was suffering, my first impulse was to believe someone had hurt her – that her injuries had an external cause. I would build forts at the top of the stairs, in front of her door, to protect her. It was when I was old enough to help walk her down the stairs, a nerve-racking act because of the occasions when something would pinch inside her and she would scream in pain, that I first understood he injuries were internal.
At this point in the film, with the audience and young version of myself both caught up with the particulars of my mother’s physical constraints, there will be an interlude that quickly addresses my mother’s medical history previous to my birth. A series of black and white still images, presented as a three-dimensional Viewmaster slide show, chronicle her early surgeries and her struggle to lead a ‘normal’ life. This sequence, done quickly and efficiently, will serve to establish her relentlessly determined nature that, later in life, would become troubling for me.
The film will progress through my earliest memories of my mother’s pain, recounting the first bloom of anxiety, to my teenage fascination with science-fiction films and cyborg protagonists. My father is a science-fiction enthusiast, and turned me onto the genre at an early age. Its emphasis on the relationship between bodies and technology provided me with a kind of mirror for my own preoccupations. Using found footage from the well-worn VHS tapes of my youth, I draw connections between my mother’s battles and the adventures of the heroines of my favorite films (Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films; Linda Hamilton in the Terminator series).
My teenage preference for ‘darker’ science-fiction films offers effective imagery for reflecting troubling present-day events: my mother’s daily injections to battle her staph infection, a fall in the bathroom that resulted in a broken femur, the onset of depression after being bed ridden for six months. These struggles will be paired with recollections of the anxiety I felt as a teen: I was both protective of my mother and resentful of her dependence, I was inspired by her strength but frustrated with what I perceived to be carelessness in her tendency to fall, I was embarrassed by the shape of her body and ashamed of myself for feeling that way. In one sequence I illustrate the relationship between my fantasies and anxieties by comparing the guilty pleasure I felt when my mother was confined to a wheelchair – because she was safe from falling and I would not have to worry – to the conclusion of Aliens, where Sigourney Weaver steps into the a Powerloader space suit to fight the Alien queen.
My mother overcame her staph infection and received a new hip. A few days before I planned to film the conclusion of the film, her walking unassisted for the first time in nine months, she fell in the kitchen while making dinner, breaking her arm and fracturing her femur. I was home at the time, and was deeply affected by the events. My father called an ambulance while I held my mother, who was screaming. At one point, she pulled me close and, stunningly, asked me to put the cream in her butternut squash soup. Then she asked me to take the bread out of the oven. In the hospital waiting room, despairing and panicked, I watched my father calmly complete a crossword puzzle.
Rather than film my mother walking, I recreated the kitchen after her fall – the soup, the shoe that had somehow flown across the room, everything I could remember – and revisited that moment. I was struck by how, for my parents, this was a routine, and by how differently I had seen things: I had intended to make this film and purge myself of my anxiety like my mother would purge herself of her infection; she would be fixed and walking and we would move on with our lives. I realized the naivete of these aspirations and came to understand the filmmaking process as simply another step in coping, no different than the forts I built as a youth or the films I watched as a teen.
Mothersbane will end much like it begins, with my mother engaging in physical therapy: this time for her broken arm. And though we are back where we started, I feel more at peace with her condition, and better prepared for the struggles that lie ahead.