docs
Mom’s Home/The August Years of May and Gloria/FLicKer/In My Parents’ Basement/Unveiled/And We Knew How to Dance
“Mom’s Home” and portrait film “The August Years of May and Gloria”
1X72 and 1X52 and 1X46
Distribution: Makin’ Movies Inc.
Broadcaster: (for broadcast in 2010) TVO, Knowledge Network, SCN, stv (Scotland)
Producer/Director: Maureen Judge
Moms Home is a compassionate, humorous and tension-filled documentary about aging mothers and their grown daughters moving in together. The film telescopes in on mothers and daughters in the autumn of their relationship, still wrestling with all their conflicting emotions, difficulties and sometimes ill-fated commitment to do ‘what’s best’.
Mom’s Home follows the stories of three mother daughter pairs who confront the issue of Mom moving in and living with her daughter, triggered by a father/husband’s death, a degenerative illness, loneliness and isolation or cultural tradition. It intimately documents the myriad of social adjustments and changing expectations that come into play when the mothers and daughters find their roles reversed and Mom becomes reliant on her adult daughters.
Mom’s Home is entertaining and provocative and will capture the hearts and minds of all those viewers who are in the process of coming to terms with their aging mothers. The stories will also resonate with the audience’s fears about themselves – What’ll happen to me when I get old? How will I cope? And their children will be drawn to watching the recognizable family dramas as the film cuts through the mire of the mother/daughter bond.
The August Years of May and Gloria
FLicKeR
1X72
Distributor: The National Film Board of Canada
Broadcaster: Bravo (broadcast) 2009
Broadcaster: Bravo! (Canada)
Production Company: Makin’ Movies in co-production with the NFB
Executive Producers: Maureen Judge, Silva Basmajian (NFB)
Producers: Maureen Judge, Anita Lee (NFB)
Director: Nik Sheehan
FlicKeR, winner of the Special Jury Prize, Canadian Feature Documentary at the Hot Docs Film Festival (2008), Best International Film on Art, Era New Horizons Festival, Poland (2009) and nominated for a 2009 Gemini Award, Best Performing Arts or Arts Film, is a film about Beat artist, Brion Gysin, his dream machine and mind-altering experiences.
‘Really, I think, behind everything, he was trying to teach people to see differently.’ – Marianne Faithfull, on Brion Gysin
The dream machine looks simple enough: A 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Just sit in front of it, close your eyes, and wait for the visions to come. The dream machine offers a drugless high that its creator – poet, artist, calligrapher and mystic Brion Gysin – believed would revolutionize human consciousness. He wasn’t alone. Kurt Cobain had a dream machine. And William S. Burroughs thought it could be used to ’storm the citadels of enlightenment’.
With a custom-made dream machine in tow, director Nik Sheehan takes us on a journey into the life of Brion Gysin – his art, his complex ideas, and his friendships with some of the 20th century’s key counterculture figures. Featuring greats like Burroughs (in archival footage), singer Marianne Faithfull, singer/artist Genesis P-Orridge of Pyschic TV, poet John Giorno, punk rocker Iggy Pop, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and artist/turntablist DJ Spooky, FLicKeR is a hypnotic documentary.
In My Parents’ Basement
1X60
Distribution: Makin’ Movies Inc. Non-Theatrical (Canada) – McNabb & Connolly – mcnabbconnolly.com
Broadcasters: TVOntario Commission / CBC Newsworld / SCN / ACCESS
Producer/Director: Maureen Judge
In My Parents’ Basement is an award-winning documentary that explores with humour, depth and compassion the stories of three adult children who have returned to their parents’ home to live. As we watch each of the subjects and their families grapple with living together. Future dreams, past failures and the present struggles of daily life are captured in close-up over a nine-month period of time.
Through conversations, anecdotes, arguments and unpredictable emotional highs and lows, In My Parents’ Basement sheds light in the parent/(adult) child bond and offers insight into the myriad of issues triggered by an adult family living together, once again.
In this darkly humorous hour-long documentary, we meet Bob, an articulate 34 year-old who has lived with his parents for two years and shows no signs of moving out. He struggles with depression, dislikes sunlight, and can’t seem to hold down a job.
Nancy, at age 42, is vulnerable: she was kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment and can’t afford a place of her own. She’s sharing the basement with her grandmother, while trying to get her pet grooming business off the ground.
Denise and David are a young married couple. They work full time, but have moved in with Denise’s parents to save money for a house. Living with the in-laws, though, has turned them into permanent infants.
In My Parents’ Basement reflects a growing phenomenon in today’s society, and as the documentary unravels, it becomes painfully clear that being a parent or a child is a lifelong calling that requires superhuman patience, compassion, and strength.
TVO IN MY PARENTS’ BASEMENT WEBSITE
Unveiled
1X60
Distribution: International – National Film Board of Canada
Canada – Makin’ Movies Inc.
Non-Theatrical – The National Film Board of Canada
Broadcasters: TVOntario Commission / W Network / Life Network / SCN / ACCESS / Knowledge Network
Producer: Makin’ Movies Inc. in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada
Producer: Maureen Judge, Janis lundman, Silva Basmajian (NFB)
Director: Maureen Judge
Unveiled: The Mother Daughter Relationship is an entertaining, Genie Award winning documentary that follows three sets of mothers and daughters in the throes of planning and executing a wedding. Rich in vérité style cinematography and complemented by insightful interviews, Unveiled celebrates the relationship by presenting a close-up portrait of mothers and daughters who “tell all” in this candid and honest film.
Sabina and Sheri – Sabina, a divorced 40-something divorce therapist, is not nearly as materially comfortable as her daughter Shari, who is in her early 20’s. Sabina shares a duplex with a friend; Shari owns her house. A relationship of conflicting expectations, disappointment, and bittersweet love, Sabina and Shari are a portrait of extremes.
Ruth and Carline – Carline, a self-reliant young woman, has trouble sharing as much of her life with her mother as Ruth would like. Carline’s ’secrets’ make Ruth feel left out and left alone. And that is driving Ruth around the bend.
Pearl, Rhonda and Heather – Pearl is getting married for the second time (her husband died several years ago). In a role-reversal, her eldest daughter Rhonda acts as her mother’s bridal consultant/confident and shepherds Pearl through the excitement and anxieties by orchestrating many of the plans. A bemused younger daughter, Heather, simply looks on.
Unveiled, a richly textured documentary spiced with humour, pathos, frustration, resentment and love, explores the myths and realities of the relationship and cuts to the heart of the mother/daughter bond.
And We Knew How to Dance
1X60
Distribution: The National Film Board of Canada
Broadcasters: CBC / A&E History / History / TVOntario / WTN(WNetwork) / ACCESS / Knowledge Network
Producer – Silva Basmajian, The National Film Board of Canada
Director – Maureen Judge
And We Knew How to Dance presents a unique record of Canada’s ‘other veterans’. Twelve Canadian women, aged between 86 and 101, recall their entry onto what had formerly been a ‘man’s world’ of munitions factories and farm labour. As nurses and ambulance drivers they came dangerously close to the battlefields. Seldom seen archival film, and still photographs document and illustrate the loving recollections and memories of these extraordinary survivors.
This film celebrates their wartime accomplishments and suggests that their commitment and determination helped lead the way to momentous postwar social changes for women such as voting rights and expanded opportunities in their working lives – changes that solidified the early gains of the women’s rights movement in Canada.
