Artist Statement for Imovie Project

“We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”

~Lucy Maud Montgomery

When we began this collaboration, we struggled to come up with a concept that spoke to all of us.  Originally we had discussed the topics of abortion, adoption, and addiction. We tried to tie all of these ideas together, but in the end, we could all agree that experiences, good and bad, are universal. Every human being grapples with what to take out of life. Our film seeks to examine how our collective experiences, no matter how fraught with pain or remorse, are the experiences that shape us.  We used Dorianne Laux’s poem, Antilamentation as our script for this film. Laux’s poem beautifully underscores the idea that regret is wasted, and that what matters most is how we move forward into the present. 

From the very beginning, we wanted to create a film that was visually poetic. One of the ways we tried to achieve this was through the use of slow motion.  The effect forces the viewer to linger within the scene, to listen and reflect.  Laux’s poem is essentially about reflecting, and we remained sensitive to this fact.  For instance, we use time-lapse footage to bring this idea to the fore.  It is when her counterpart joins our “woman”, that the world moves in real-time again, successfully conveying the psychological move from regretting the past to being in the present.  Many of our scenes strip away extraneous material in order to capture only the most important information.  We have tried in this way to focus on our character’s experiences and feelings.

We really wanted to emphasize the mood of the poem through lighting, obscuring the face of our actors, and editing. Lighting was an important strategy in our film.  We used natural light, stage lighting, silhouetting, dim lighting, and mood lighting.  We used it at different parts in the film to convey calm, angst, hurt, and intense loneliness.  Because we wanted to allow the viewer to relate to these emotions, we kept our actors “faceless.”  Through editing, we were able to add several elements that added to the feel of the film.  Our song, Brian Eno’s Emerald and Stone, was added to give the film a gentle pacing and a background for the voice over, a narration of Laux’s Antilamentation. We also added transitions, like “fade to black” for the pivotal point in the poem when our narrator commands “relax.” Because each scene was critical for conveying the content of the poem, we worked to tie the music, film clips and voice-over together in a way that felt natural and seamless. 

This film project was a long and complicated process that was not without its challenges.  However, the resulting film is a creative endeavor that we are all very proud to share. “Antilamentation” is a labor of great time and love, and one that we can all agree, we don’t regret.