“The more I performed as my mother, the more I became her. I am writing a script about her and me and our relationship and how we have reluctantly reversed our roles – Mother and Daughter. I am slowly losing myself, just as my mother is losing herself. I am taking on my mother’s identity by performing her and by caring for her and writing about her. By shooting a film a day, I am forced to film when I don’t always want to.”
The above extract was taken from diary notes of a thirty day film project and performed in a kitchen scene in the experimental short I Have Lost Myself. In January 2017 I began a thirty day experiment of performing to camera. I’d studied acting for film and television in the previous year and wanted to rehearse what I’d learned and use it as a vessel to express the dual roles of mother and daughter, mother and carer. I would shoot a film a day for thirty days, no matter my energy level and enthusiasm.
I set up my studio with a backdrop together with soft lighting, a tripod and a full frame camera with multiple lens. These included a 35mm-70mm zoom, 85mm portrait lens, 40mm lens and a fisheye. I wrote out the script to I Have Lost Myself and rehearsed it to camera. I performed the contrasting emotions which my mum experienced, alternating from joy to anxiety and back again in one breath. Repeatedly performing such contrasting emotions after a day of living them proved too exhausting at times and I could not keep it up for thirty consecutive days. Instead, I decided to move my shooting set up around the house and film myself doing various activities in each room. I pretended to be mum sleeping in her bed or I spoke direct to camera about my physical and mental exhaustion. Shooting days alternated between well thought out scenes or shooting on the fly.
At the halfway point I’d returned home from the pub where I had taken mum. She’d caused a scene and maybe it was exhaustion but I burst into tears in front of strangers who each had their own opinion about dementia care. I wheeled mum home across the road and brought her inside where she sat in her usual place in the living room. Her safe place. I set up my lights, tripod and camera in the kitchen and filmed my tears and semi breakdown. My truth to camera was a turning point in the work and the title of the film came from it organically as I wrote in this diary extract:
I couldn’t get to sleep last night because mum got up around four times and the last time was 2 am. Then I felt trapped and teary and wanted to have my life back again. Be careful what you wish for. I don’t think I can do this next year. I know I can’t do it. It dawned on me today that I have lost myself. I was even teary on Sunday. I took mum to the pub after her screaming at me in the morning when I was getting her dressed and washed. My ear ached from her screams and she looked at me like I was the devil. Five minutes later and she’d forgotten it and she was lovely mum again, even asking for help in the bathroom before we went out to the pub. It dawned on me now that I have lost myself. I have lost my identity. I have become a carer of my mum and I feel old and I am fed up and I feel all the joy has left me.
Be careful what you wish for. Wishing I was no longer caring for mum meant that she was dead.
After the thirty days I’d put together a sixty minute edit for my M.F.A. tutors and explained to them that it was an experiment for my eyes only. I’d never intended it to be public work and I was paranoid that people would view it as planned piece instead as an experimental rehearsal of imperfect camera angles and raw sound. They persuaded me to cut the edit in half and the finished film was eventually screened and exhibited internationally.
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In September 2017 my mother was given a few months to live. During these last months we spent every moment together in her living room. Faced with the inevitably of her being gone for ever I made the decision to pick up my camera and record every moment. Well, almost. I made another decision that if I was going to record my mother’s last months it wouldn’t be the cruelty of the disease. Instead I chose to record those flickering moments of the real Noni. For she was still in there and I recorded hundreds of videos and thousands of digital and analog photographs in order to capture The Portrait of Noni.
Portrait of Noni is a film in development compiled from this footage and is produced by Ginger Media & Entertainment.
from Ginger Liu
Trailer One.
Ginger Liu. M.F.A.
