Coming to NYC’s JCC Manhattan CineMatters series tonight, Tuesday, March 8: LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER!
Gayle Kirschenbaum’s exploration of her fraught relationship with her mother debuted at Sarasota last year. Other screenings included DocAviv, Woods Hole, Rhode Island, Woodstock, Orlando, Mumbai, and Jewish fests in Toronto, Nashville, Atlanta, Palm Beach, Miami and Baton Rouge.
Kirschenbaum continues to mine the personal terrain that was the subject of her previous film, MY NOSE, a short that focused on her mother Mildred’s obsession with her daughter’s appearance. Expanding from this premise to take a wider look at their mother/daughter relationship, Kirschenbaum’s new film is, essentially, filmmaking as therapy, for all the good – and bad – that this entails. From Kirschenbaum’s standpoint, she has suffered from years of humiliation, criticism, and downright abuse from the hypercritical Mildred, while the mother points to her daughter’s lifelong defiance and inability to let go of minor things. While the filmmaker eventually convinces herself to look past her mother’s prickliness to consider what made her that way, this doesn’t ameliorate the awkwardness of the proceedings for the viewer. Focused on such a fundamental relationship as that between a child and a parent, audiences can certainly relate to some extent, but it’s like being invited to a friend’s home for dinner only to silently witness the evening erupt into a never-ending family fight, with no escape in sight.
what (not) to doc 