Through my video work, I seek to make documentaries that tell people’s
unique stories. Storytelling has always been a part of my life. My father
continually regales us with anecdotes of his father Morris and his Uncle Hymie,
two characters who could have been in a Sholem Aleichem novel and who
immigrated to Montreal between the two world wars from the Eastern European
shtetl of Shtayatchistik. I’ve always had a fascination with my Jewish heritage
and this has extended into inquisitiveness about other people’s stories. Simply
asking questions does not entirely abate my curiosity, and my interest is
especially piqued when the answers are elusive or non-existent.
I create narrative visualizations by digitally assembling video
interviews, photographs, documents, found and created footage, music, sounds,
and memorabilia, combining both two dimensional and three dimensional
approaches. I try to immerse myself in the culture and become close to my
characters so they trust me and open up. Clothing, textiles, food, and rituals
play a part in these depictions, and the blending of these elements stimulates
the viewers’ senses. Themes emerge around issues of memory, displacement, and
identity, and more specifically around the role of women in perpetuating
culture and tradition. My work condones domesticity. It is through the
strength, resilience, and courage of women that traditions are carried from
generation to generation. Tensions rise in the depictions of opposing binaries
like tradition and modernity, restriction and freedom, and public and private
lives.
I wrestle with the parameters of legitimate visualization and truth in
storytelling. Can I fill in the blanks and make up information if it is
missing? Can one person’s story complete the puzzle of another’s? Is it the
meaning generated by the work that counts, or is it the integrity of presenting
something real? I have begun to
realize that creating documentary visual narratives is a combination of all of
this.
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