New to VOD this week:
SEAT 20D
Director:
Jill Campbell
World Premiere:
Hamptons Doc Fest 2019
About:
A sculpture project helps a mother reckon with the loss of her son in a terrorist attack.
Alexander Lowenstein was a passenger on Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988, part of a group of Syracuse University students returning from a semester abroad in London. The plane was destroyed by a terrorist bomb that ultimately claimed 270 victims and came to be known as the Lockerbie bombing. As a way to process her grief, Alexander’s mother, Suse, turned to her artwork, beginning a sculpture of a woman confronted with the death of her child. Reaching out to other families from the Lockerbie bombing, Suse found 75 other mothers who wished to participate. The result, completed over the course of 15 years, is the sculpture garden dubbed Dark Elegy. When focused on Suse and the healing properties of the artistic process, the film is strongest; attempts to bring in other stories, including an overextended sequence with Syracuse University’s Remembrance Scholar program, prove less successful.
what (not) to doc 