Mary Mary

Presented as an autobiography, “Mary Mary” interweaves the political with the mythical; visual and textual “quotes” from other films with fragments of children’s stories; and dreams and memories with history. “M” is an ambiguous figure: an English-Canadian woman filmmaker struggling with the representational structures that form and are formed by her as she tries to make a film. At first her script eludes her. Locked in her room, she becomes tangled in a web of memories, images and stories, quotations and histories. Yet even within these confines (narrative and psychic, as well as architectural) the possibility of new readings is implied. Finally, the need to speak itself – via existing ( and thus, available) representational systems – becomes so urgent, that M’s stasis is overcome. She actively immerses herself in the stories, and traverses the spaces that up to now have only haunted her. Central to the possibility of forming new readings, the film suggests, is an attention to, and engagement with, memories, histories and stories, and to the long-silenced voices that have recounted these. In the case of this particular Canadian woman’s story, these are the voices of native peoples in their quest for self determination, of mothers and grandmothers, and of forgotten personal experiences. The self that is finally represented is specific, though not unique; implicity feminist; and politically implicated in the lives and struggles of others – past present and future. Screenings/Awards: Images Festival 1989; official selection for the 1st Exhibition of Experimental Cinema, ARCO Feria International Film Festival 1990; New Works Showcase, Princess Court, Kingston