Response to Bergson

For me, most of the films that I have made have been extremely personal journeys and infused with much conscious memory and pure memory. Bergson states, “…there is no perception which is not full of memories.” My last film SHADOW BOXING was written specifically for my husband. I also wanted to tell a story with pictures that was beautiful and cinematic. Looking back, I can see that, the lead character was written as a combination of all the important male figures and/or relationships in my life. Honestly this whole piece was an example of me infusing my art with the past, present and future.

The story is a psychological journey about a man struggling with adulthood and intimacy and coming to terms with his life. Honestly, on a conscious level I was not even aware that this was what I was writing about? I just wanted to make a pretty short piece? To quote Bergson…”with the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience.” I started writing the script by looking at old photographs of my husband from birth to adulthood. I can remember seeing a picture of him as a child, crying and wearing only one shoe. This image of a shoeless, lost child opens the film. I also had a creepy statue of the three, hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkey’s, which greatly resonated with me at the time and also used this image in the film. The pictures and subject matter of this piece were all signs that recalled me to former images and themes in my life.

Anyhow, I have posted the trailer from my short below. Someone once described this piece to me as a film about memory and loss. One festival sent me a nice rejection letter and said that no matter how many times they watched the film they could not grasp what it was about. For me, it really is a journey about a man coming to terms with his past, present and future. When I was working on the film none of these themes were in the forefront of my mind. Now all of this seems very obvious to me and kind of strange that I was so unconscious to my own inner world. As my children would say, “By accident, but really on purpose.” In any case, the whole film has a dreamlike quality to it, which is fitting, because making it was a process of accessing unconscious memories and stringing together past, present and future.

Deirdre