#I love how insecure she is because of her nightmarish failed experiments and how she can't internalize being a Cool Girl 'cause of it

[some-pers0n]

Feeling. normal! 😁

[comicreliefmorlock]

#WomenInHorror - Relic - Oh, the Thoughts

I bet you thought @tlbodine would get to this first, huh? HAH!

So as part of our ongoing quest to inflict doctorate-level studies of horror film on ourselves for... the sake of doing it, Wuffie and I have been watching a lot of horror movies. Having finished our #HorrorThruTheDecades quest, we moved on to #WomenInHorror, focusing on horror films directed by women.

She's written quite a bit about the movies we've been watching. However, this last week, we watched a film that inspired me into a long-winded post-mortem after we finished it.

Relic is a 2020 Australian horror film directed by Natalie Erika James, focusing on a three-generation family struggle between a grandmother, a mother and a daughter.

Edna, the grandmother, has been missing for several days when her daughter Kay and granddaughter Sam arrive to check on her. We get a little from Kay hinting that her relationship with her mother has been strained, and alternatively, defense of Edna by her granddaughter Sam who has a completely different relationship with her. (As tends to happen with grandparents and grandchildren.) Clues are laid out to hint that Edna may be succumbing to Alzheimer's and quite honestly, the movie does a very good job in showing how absolutely difficult it is to deal with that. Especially in the family situation involving the shift in power dynamic that happens when a parental figure suddenly needs a lot of careful, supportive care.

And Robyn Nevin as Edna? Fantastic. Sympathetic and terrifying all at once.

I won't spoil the film's ending here--you've got to go below the cut for that--but it's at once poignant and plays fair emotionally with the film's overall tone.

Now, for what I went off at great length at Wuffie about... [#triggerwarning for child abuse discussion]

Relic is pretty clearly intended to be a film about grief, aging, the inevitability of death and how part of dealing with health issues in older generations involves facing that you yourself one day may be in that exact situation.

What it also does really, really well--albeit unintentionally but strongly enough that it hit me across the face with a shoe--is create a solid metaphor for intergenerational child abuse.

Fairly early on in the film, the granddaughter Sam discovers a black mold staining a wall inside of a cluttered closet. This black mold becomes a consistent visual element that shows in nightmares, in the house and on Edna herself, staining her skin like a bruise. This mold, through the nightmares, is visually tied to a now-demolished smaller house that'd once stood on the family grounds and was the home of a "great-grandfather" mentioned once directly and alluded to in several nightmare sequences.

This mold grows on stained glass windows that were transplanted from the former house, spreads across the interior of the house itself and spreads across Edna's skin.

Several visual cues tie the black mold to the "great-grandfather" who, in one nightmare sequence, is shown sitting on the edge of a narrow bed before collapsing forward, out of sight. When the camera pans over, a human figure is etched in black mold on the floor.

At the end of the film, after Edna's transformation--you really ought to watch the movie to know what I mean--and the joining of three generations of women in silence together, Sam spies a black spot on her mother Kay's back, hinting at that same mold that destroyed Edna.

Incestuous child abuse is insidious and yet, from the memoirs I've read, always seems to be something the family "knows about" and simply doesn't discuss. A grandparent, a cousin, an aunt or uncle is abusing the family children--sometimes singling out one child, sometimes abusing every child--and the family is aware of this, but no actual steps are taken to bring the abuser to justice.

The cycle of abuse is fairly commonly known, but the long-term effects of child sexual abuse aren't always as easily identified by the public. Alcohol and drug abuse are extremely common amongst child sexual abuse survivors, as well as an inability to develop healthy, trusting relationships with other adults. Difficulties in parenting can also arise as the person who suffered abuse may fear the same thing happening to their child or be struggling emotionally and not able to show their child the affection they need.

Much like the insidious spread of black mold in out-of-sight places, causing illnesses that can't be immediately identified and threatening the structural integrity of a house, incestuous child abuse absolutely threatens and even destroys lives. It's hard to spot at a glance, hides in plain sight--in closets, cupboards, under stairs, behind furniture--and causes illnesses that can be attributed to more "acceptable" causes.

With the clear visual tie to the once-mentioned "great-grandfather" that isn't mentioned between the family members again, it's not hard to go a bit further and consider him the unmentioned, unnamed family abuser. His actions tainted the house he lived in, the remnants brought from it--Edna says later in the film how much she hates the stained glass windows, how cold and scared she feels when she passes them--and spread not only through the house but through the family itself.

And this mold--and the effects of intergenerational incestuous abuse--hits all three women in this family differently.

Edna, theoretically the member of the family who suffered direct abuse, is physically tainted by the black mold to the point it literally degenerates her body. Aspects of her behavior--disliking having "help" or needing to ask for it, offering a token to her granddaughter one day, demanding it back the next, trying to save photo albums from 'the house' by burying them--seemed strikingly like a woman whose coping mechanisms are now failing her.

She mentions believing someone is breaking into her house, stating it only began after the death of her husband. Alone in a massive house with visual, physical ties to the location of her abuse, feeling vulnerable and struggling to push away memories, Edna's actions feel like a cry for help that she can't verbalize because to do so would be to admit not only the vulnerability she feels now, but the fact that it's equivalent to how vulnerable she was as a child, being abused.

Fairly early on in Relic, Kay makes it clear that she and her mother are not particularly close. She makes attempts to stay in contact, but isn't invested in her mother's day to day life and has actually distanced herself to a degree. Her daughter Sam has a closer and more openly affectionate relationship with Edna. Kay mentions her mother threatening to lock her in the old house "when she was a brat" and seems to want a comfortable distance between herself and her mother.

A parent who has endured abuse as a child can have profound difficulty in bonding with their own children. Healthy sexual intercourse and adult relationships are tainted by child abuse experiences, and some memoires have mentioned being pregnant making them feel "dirty" as if they'd committed some great sin. Bonding with an infant while struggling with those emotions can lead to distant parenting and leave a child with an insecure emotional attachment.

Sam, the granddaughter, is the least damaged by the intergenerational abuse at the beginning of the film. She has an affectionate relationship with her grandmother, seems actively interested in doing what she can to help Edna and scolds her mother for not taking a more prominent role. When Sam finds a sketchbook with a sketch of the 'great-grandfather's' house, she doesn't know what it is or to whom it belonged. The cycle of abuse has been broken; Sam isn't even aware that abuse happened.

What she does is learn of it through a visual metaphor for unearthing family history. Discovering the black mold in the closet and pursuing a ghostly figure into what becomes a nightmarish labyrinth that has echoes of the home she'd always felt safe in plays very well as the realization for an unabused member of a family learning about the abuse that happened. What was loving and familiar is suddenly alien and terrifying, threatening and tainted.

By the end of the film--rather an emotionally poignant moment--all three women have been hurt by this black mold (i.e. incestuous abuse) and have come together in a moment of quiet rest. Edna, completely altered into a shell of who she once was, with Kay, accepting that what happened is fact and had effects on her as well, and Sam, who now understands a great deal about her mother and grandmother.

Every generation in the family has been affected to some degree, even if the cycle of abuse was fortunately broken. The black mold not only completely transformed Edna internally, expressed in a striking visual moment, but also tainted her daughter. Even the granddaughter, although physically unharmed by the mold, has been permanently changed by learning about what happened in her family and feeling her perceptions twist (frighteningly so) from what she once held to what she now knows.

While I don't think the film intended to be such a great visual metaphor for the horrific effects of incestuous family abuse and the intergenerational damage it causes, it did an incredibly good job of being one.

[ecsundance]

A very Long (yet very awesome) Week of Sundance

Organisers of Sundance say in Tryon’s discussion that “If a filmmaker wants to create his or her own idiosyncratic vision, it’s often not worth looking around for a big budget, waiting for others to say it’s okay to make it.  You have to stand up and make the film yourself…” (pg.164) and Kevin MacDonald in Tryon’s discussion talks about how basically all you need to make a movie is a laptop and a video camera, and how amazing it is that we live in a time which we can do this (pg.156)

This is similar to the idea that you can complain about not having enough time or experience to do something, but if you get over yourself and do it either you fail and learn, or you succeed and gain confidence.  If you have a great idea then nothing should hold you back from making it a reality.  Movies with billions of dollars behind them have fallen flat.  So it stands to reason that a movie made on weekends with only a couple bucks could be amazing.

According to Chuck Tryon’s discussion of “Reinvented Festivals” (pg. 160), because there are a lot more independent bloggers/critics now due to newspapers not hiring many, there is a consistent stream of new reviews being released even minutes after a film finishes premiering.  

Taking part in this class and festival and constantly thinking about what I thought about a film plays into this as I (along with my classmates) were some of the first to review some of these films.  It’s such a fun experience to think and talk about film as everyone will have various ways of perceiving and connecting to each film.

Favourite Film From the Festival

It feels hard to choose a favourite because there were so many incredible films which affected me in different ways like Coda, How it Ends, Flee, and honestly most of the films I saw in this year's festival . However, I fell in love with The World to Come when it wasn’t even a movie I initially planned on seeing.

The world to come felt like a poem. It made my heart ache deeply, marinating in feelings of melancholic love, and unexpected loss. Maybe it hit me especially hard because I lost one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had in my life along with family and pets (since they are family too) since the start of Covid: I have regrets and things I never got to say.  Maybe it’s because I’m fiercely fighting with my own identities right now.  Either way, it was hard to watch.  Parts of it still haunt me and still leave me breathless on the brink of tears.  It struck a chord in me which I have a hard time fully putting to words.  I didn’t originally even want to watch this film, it somehow ended up on my list of on demand films, and my mom convinced me to watch it (and I’m so glad she did).

It is a story which about two women which takes place in the 1800s, together in their loneliness who fall for each other behind their husbands’ backs.  They secretly rendezvous in the forest and tucked away corners of their homes when their husband’s are working.  It is beautiful in story and dialogue; it doesn’t get stale.  It feels modern somehow, though it is set in the 19th century, and I’m still processing it all to figure out why exactly.

Least Favorite Film from the Festival...

Eight for Silver by Sean Ellis wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it was certainly not the best;  I would not actively choose to watch this again.  It had interesting concepts such as only natural lighting being used throughout the film and those turned into the werewolf emerging, negatively changed, from the dead animal.  The movie would have gotten 4 stars rather than 3 from me simply by not having a CGI werewolf (unless it was so brilliantly terrifying and amazing it had to be shown) and by keeping the original plot of the Roma’s spells/curses (fueled from the massacre which the targeted village caused).  The scarecrow and buried teeth, and the strange dreams which followed were such a great piece, but they just fell away more and more.  The addition of the religious text (which mentions 30 pieces of silver is unnecessary, and just recycles old vampire movies/myth ) took this film from a great timepiece and cheapened it in combination with the subpar CGI creature, while also making it feel far too Hollywood in a bad way.  Again, some of the ideas, like the person within the wolf were great, but they could have kept it that way and not shown the monster otherwise.  

A list of All Feature Films I Saw:

During the 2021 Sundance film festival I have seen and rated the following:

Coda ***** Sian Heder

The story of a teenage hearing girl who wants to be a singer living with her otherwise deaf family who run a fishing boat.

Cryptozoo **** Dash Shaw

A woman’s attempt to protect mythical creatures in a world where everyone wants to harm them or use them as weapons.

Misha and the wolves ***** Sam Hobkinson

A chilling documentary about holocaust tale with a twist.

Users **** Natalia Amada

A mother’s view of the world, global warming, technology, her children and the relationship between all of this. 

Prisoners of Ghostland **** Sion Sono

Samurai meets the gunslinger Western World in this colourful action-horror (featuring Nicholas Cage). 

Censor **** Prano Bailey-Bond

The story of a woman whose sister disappeared as a child and how her job as a horror film censor helps her uncover the truth.

How it ends ***** Daryl Wein, Zoe Lister-Jones

A walk through the last day on Earth with a woman and her younger self as they make peace with their lives, relationships with others, and their own inner selves.

Strawberry Mansion ***** Dan Deacon

A dreamy/nightmarish surreal tale of a dream tax collector as he falls in love with the younger version of his client.

Cusp ***** Isabel Bethencourt, Parker Hill

A documentary on the lives of teen girls in Texas which delves into rape culture, poverty, and what it’s like to be a young woman.  

Eight for Silver *** Sean Ellis

Werewolf lore set in the 19th century. 

John and the Hole **** Pascual Sisto

A young teenage boy puts his family in a hole in the woods as he tries to deal with the stressors of being a kid and what adulthood holds, entwined with fable. 

R#J ***** Carey Williams 

A modern retelling of Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet through the age of social media, with a twist or two.

Coming Home in the Dark ***** James Ashcroft

A horror story of  a family who are abducted by two strangers who they later learn they share a deeper, darker history with. 

We’re All Going to The World’s Fair **** Jane Schoenbrun

A showing of loneliness and desperation through an online roleplaying game and it’s after effects.

First Date **** Manuel Crosby, Darren Knapp

A story of a first date gone VERY wrong.

The World to Come ***** Mona Fastvold

A 19th century story of the growing connection between two farmhouse wives.

Violation ***** Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli

A film about a woman’s trauma and how she… Deals with it.

Marvelous and the Black Hole ***** Kate Tsang

A story about how a young teen girl gets through the loss of her mother through forming a connection with a local magician.

The Blazing World ***** Carlson Young 

A traumatised young woman tries to bring her sister back from “the other side” but must really fight her own inner demons.

Mayday ***** Karen Cinorre

A story of a young woman overcoming trauma and fighting back against the man in a dreamlike state.

Night of the Kings **** Philippe Lacote 

A new storyteller is anointed in a prison run by its inmates and he must keep telling these stories until the moon sets to stay alive. (It helps to understand the specific culture more with this one, otherwise it sort of goes over your head.)

Life in a Day 2021 ***** Kavin Macdonald

A grounding compilation of scenes from across the world on the same day, July 25th, with scenes one after the other which either connect or contrasted in an impactful way.

Flee ***** Jonas Poher Rasmussen

A biography told through animation of a young gay immigrant. 

Short Films

Bj’s Mobile Gift Shop- Jason Park

A story of a young guy in Chicago who makes money to support himself and his grandparents by running a mobile gift shop out of a large suitcase.

Flex - Josefin Malmen, David Strindberg

A visual telling of a bodybuilder rubber-banding between insecurity and self obsession through surreal imagery and dialogue. 

The Affected- Rikke Gregersen

A retelling of a college student preventing the deportation of a man back to Afghanistan through the interactions of the bystanders.  

You Wouldn’t Understand- Trish Harnetiaux

A time-warp involving a picnic, a strange character looking for “horsey sauce” and a grocery store clerk armed with a food scanner.

Animations

Ghost Dogs- Joe Cappa 

A family's new dog is “haunted” by the family’s many deceased dogs in squishy colourful 90s/early 2000s style animated short. 

GNT- Sara Hirner, Rosemary Vasquez-Brown 

A woman obsessed with social media tries to make yeast infections popular.

Trepanation- Nick Flaherty

A showing of depression through a disturbing hole ridden entity emerging from a hole and taking the place of the house's owner. 

Little Miss Fate- Joder Von Rotz

A cleaning bird interrupts the fate of a couple going out on a date, leading to disastrous consequences.

Indie Series

I had really wanted to see Seeds of Deceit by Miriam Guttman and Would you Rather by Lise Akoka, (I tried viewing 4 Feet High by María Belén Poncio and Rosario Perazolo Masjoan but there was an issue which Sundance staff never got back to me about, sadly) but I ran out of time.  

However, I did see These Days by Adam Brookes which takes place in New York City during Covid, showing a young woman living alone and how she survives living alone and being unable to work as a dancer.  

New Frontier Experiences

Sadly, I kept thinking I’d have endless time.  I did not engage in the New Frontier experience except for in class on one occasion.  I think it was a great idea and fantastic opportunity and I regret not planning my time better for this specifically.

Talks or Events 

Ignite x Adobe featured shorts films from artists aged 18 to 25 and was very inspiring since I’m in the age range of these artists. 

A few I especially enjoyed were Vigincita, Personals, and Joychild (Although I honestly enjoyed the whole compilation).

Virgincita - A sexual coming of age/ look at mother daughter relationship mixed with religion.

Personals - A sexual encounter between two insecure individuals who find comfort with one another by the end.

Joychild - A documentary piece showing a child discovering and opening up about their gender identity. 

Q&As

I attended a few Q&As, but my favourite I believe was CODA’s.

They spoke about how they worked around language barriers and learned sign language before and throughout production.  Everyone just seemed at ease and like they had a great time in production of the film.

- - -

Overall, I’m quite pleased with how this festival went virtually.  It was a truly amazing experience which I am so glad I was able to take part in.  It was as Immersive an experience as I think could be created virtually and seemed to go relatively smoothly for the most part for having it be the first time this has happened.  

I’m also extremely grateful for the inclusivity which allowed for those who may not be able to travel as easily due to disability, financial reasons, or anything else.  I don’t know if I’d have been able to go otherwise.  

This experience was more amazing than I even hoped it would be.  I feel so inspired that I plan to find out how to submit to Sundance so that I can possibly try to get a short film idea I have done for the short film/18-25 year old category.  I feel like I can actually do this now and I have so many new ideas. 

Thank you!

Tryon, Chuck,

On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies

,  Rutgers University Press, Copyright © 2013.

Mae McCloskey

[chocolate-brownies]

A friend once told me about repeated fights he had with his wife early on in their marriage. Much of their conflict centered on how to have dinner. He liked to eat hurriedly, standing up in the kitchen, getting it over with as quickly as possible. She liked to set the table elegantly, sit down, and eat leisurely, together. Many nights they fought instead of eating. Finally, they sought the help of a marriage counselor.

As they examined the layers of meaning hidden in the simple and familiar word “dinner,” they each discovered how many associations, and how many people, they were actually bringing to that table. He talked about his father, a brutal man who was often only at home at dinnertime, which became a nightmarish experience to be escaped from as quickly as possible. She spoke of her fractured family and her mentally ill brother who consumed her mother with worry. It was mainly at dinner that her family made an effort to talk to her, to find out about her day—where she felt she indeed belonged to a family.

For each of them dinner was rarely just dinner, and their partner was often not the person standing in front of them, but an “other” made of an amalgam of past hurts and long-held dreams and tentative new yearnings.

Loving People As They Are

Can we ever actually see another person? If we create an “other” out of our projections and associations and ready interpretations, we have made an object of a person; we have taken away their humanity. We have stripped from our consciousness their own sensitivity to pain, their likely wish to feel at home in their bodies and minds, their complexity and intricacy and mutability.

If we have lost any recognition of the truth of change in someone, and have fixed them in our minds as “good” or “bad” or “indifferent,” we’ve lost touch with the living essence of that person. We are dwelling in a world of stylized prototypes and distant caricatures, reified images, and, often, very great loneliness.

Meditation practice is like a skills-training in stepping back, in getting a broader perspective and a deeper understanding of what’s happening.

Meditation practice is like a skills-training in stepping back, in getting a broader perspective and a deeper understanding of what’s happening. Mindfulness, one of the tools at the core of meditation, helps us not be lost in habitual biases that distort how we interpret our feelings. Without mindfulness, our perception is easily shaped by barely conscious thoughts, such as, “I’m shaking and my stomach is roiling with what seems to be fear, but I can never allow myself to admit that. I’ll pretend it never came up.” If we do that, it is a great struggle to be kind. There is no ready access to kindness without awareness.

Mindfulness also helps us to see through our prejudices about another person. For example, a person might think, “All older women are fuzzy thinkers, so she can’t possibly be as sharp as she is pretending to be.” Mindfulness helps us to see by showing us that a conclusion such as that one is simply a thought in our own mind. Mindfulness enables us to cultivate a different quality of attention, one where we relate to what we see before us not just as an echo of the past or a foreshadowing of the future, but more as it is right now. Here too we find the power of kindness, because we can connect to things as they are.

Mindfulness enables us to cultivate a different quality of attention, one where we relate to what we see before us not just as an echo of the past or a foreshadowing of the future, but more as it is right now.

Making the effort to truly see someone doesn’t mean we never respond or react. We can and do attempt to restore a failing marriage, or protest at loud cell phones in public places, or try with everything in us to rectify injustice. But we can do it from a place that allows people to be as textured as they are, that admits our feelings to be as varied and flowing as they are, that is open to surprises—a place that listens, that lets the world come alive.

One essential step in learning to see each other more genuinely is to bother to look. If someone yells at us, or annoys us, or dazzles us with a gift, we do pay attention to them. Our challenge then is to see them as they are, not as we project or assume them to be. But if they don’t make much of an impression on us, we have a different challenge: it is all too easy to look right through them.

Offering Loving-Kindness to People We Don’t Know

In particular, the meditation exercise of offering loving-kindness to a neutral person confronts our tendency to look through people we do not know. We choose a person whom we don’t strongly like or dislike; we feel, indeed, rather neutral or indifferent toward them. Very often it helps to select a near-stranger, or someone who plays a certain role or function in our lives—the checkout person in the grocery store, for example, or the UPS delivery person. We may not know much about them, not even their name.

When we send a neutral person loving-kindness, we are consciously changing a pattern of overlooking them, or talking around them, to one of paying attention to them. The experiment in attention we are making through these benevolent wishes asks of us whether we can practice loving “thy neighbor as thyself” when we don’t know the facts about someone’s dependent, elderly parent, or at-risk teenager, and so our heartstrings have not been tugged.

When we think of our neutral person, we haven’t learned the story of their suspicious mole or empty evenings. We have no knowledge of their inspiring triumphs or their admirable philanthropy, and so we are not in awe of them. We aren’t seeing their tension after a disappointing job interview, or their sadness after their lover leaves. We practice wishing them well anyway, not knowing any of this, but simply because they exist, and because we do know the beauty, the sorrow, the poignancy, and the sheer, unalterable insecurity of existence that we all share.

On trains and on the streets, in our homes and in our communities, we practice paying attention—through developing mindfulness, through developing loving-kindness, through letting go of projections—because a more complete attention proffers many special gifts. These gifts can penetrate through the exigencies of social roles and even through terrible hurt. They can remove the seeming hollowness of chance encounters.

Through paying attention we learn that even when we don’t especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship with them.

Paying attention in this way provides the gift of noticing, the gift of connecting. We find the gift of seeing a little bit of ourselves in others, of realizing that we’re not so awfully alone. We can let go of the burden of so much of what we habitually carry with us and receive the gift of the present moment.

Through paying attention we learn that even when we don’t especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship with them. We come to realize that this relatedness is in itself like a vibrant, changing, living entity. We discover the gift of caring, of tending to this force of life that exists between us, and we are immeasurably enriched by that.

From The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion, by Sharon Salzberg.

Read More

Guided Meditation

Be Kind to Yourself—Right Now 

To be kind to others, you need to start with yourself. Read More 

Sharon Salzberg

October 5, 2015

Meditation

This Loving-Kindness Meditation is a Radical Act of Love 

Jon Kabat-Zinn leads us in a heartscape meditation for deep healing of ourselves and others. Read More 

Jon Kabat-Zinn

November 8, 2018

Voices

Why Loving-Kindness Takes Time: Sharon Salzberg 

It’s only after we’ve practiced many times that we’ll begin to notice a habit developing—namely, letting ourselves off the hook once in awhile. Read More 

Sharon Salzberg

January 19, 2018

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