As if in response to Susan Suleiman’s aphorism on motherhood “Mothers don’t write, they are written” and Julia Kristeva’s question “After the Virgin [Mary] what do we know about the inner discourse of a mother?” I decided to do a film on my own experience as a mother who is also an artist and the ambivalent but poignant process of inscribing a child into my life.
In the film three screens are placed near each other in a row. The uninterrupted process of breastfeeding captured on one of them almost defines the duration of the work while the other two screens intertwine with each other, to present several repeating narratives/conflicts and their possible developments/resolutions to an audience: the ambivalence of the maternal experience and feelings. As Adrienne Rich writes: “It’s the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.” I explore my experience of the conflicts of motherhood and creativity, domesticity and self-reflection, empowerment of the camera gaze and its ownership, the process of fitting a picture (a child) into a landscape and visual passivity, displacement and fragmentation of time and space, maternal rituals, questions of femininity and female body and others. But the film doesn’t illustrate these concepts directly; they grow inside and outside of it. The film’s images describe the very personal raw experience of motherhood almost taking a perverse pleasure in the graphic intimate portrayal of domesticity at the limits of tolerability and creating a record of pure labor and struggle.
2 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION
|
distribution format |
Digital file on USB stick (PAL) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
Russian |
|
translation |
English (Embedded subtitles) |
|
rental fee |
132,00 € |
|
distribution format |
Digital file on server (PAL) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
Russian |
|
translation |
English (Embedded subtitles) |
|
rental fee |
132,00 € |
