Kintsukuroi

Although I’m a filmmaker, I have found that in times of deep trauma in my life, the healing qualities of creativity have needed to play out in front of the camera.

Films are how I see the world – but every once in a while, I need the world to see me, and it requires an act of presence – and I would say courage – to be seen. Not quite broken but cracked. As we all are.

We spend so much time putting band aids on fractures we sometimes neglect to see the golden light pouring out of the old version of us falling to the ground.

Kintsukuroi was about acknowledging where the cracks were and surrendering to the process. Immersive healing. I wish it on everyone.

No work of art exists in a vacuum, and I believe my influences for this work to be my admiration for Brené Brown, (read ‘Atlas of the Heart’ and watch her TedX talks on courage and vulnerability), as well as my former experimental film teachers at the Met Film School in London: Helen McGregor and Dee Meaden, who gave me a different and liberating perception of making art – away from the constraints of my mind, and dropping into my body. I’d dissociated from my body early in teenage years, and it had been a functional vehicle but in my mid twenties, these ladies somehow showed me it could also be a work of art, and part of the Creation.

I would like to acknowledge my photographer, Tatjana Tischler, who picked up her camera for the first time after the sudden passing of her husband for this project – I am in utter gratitude and admiration.

Again: presence and courage. I utterly trust Tatjana and felt safe creating this with her.

And the make up artist for the shoot: Robyn Donaghy, again for holding space for this to emerge and understanding the purpose.

Driving to the shoot in make up, and seeing people’s reactions helped me experience myself as free from having to explain anything and in a way – gave me a visceral sense of integrity, as well as shaking people awake from life on autopilot for a moment…

…  And really, isn’t that an artist’s ultimate mission!