Motherland Jennifer Steinman, USA, 2009, 80 minutes
Saturday, May 15 | 2:00pm | Vancity Theatre
How do you go on after the death of a child? When six American women, whose only common link is the fact that each of them has suffered the loss of a son or a daughter, decide to travel to Africa, something remarkable occurs. Director Jennifer Steinman was inspired to make Motherland after witnessing the suffering of her friend Barbara, whose son Jason was killed in a car accident. Like the other women in the group — Debbi whose son Garrett was killed by a drunk driver; Mary Helena, whose son Aaron was killed in a triple-homicide; Anne, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Grace killed herself; Kathy, whose son Mike died in a motorcycle accident; and finally Lauren, whose older brother, Teveston, was the victim of gang violence — Barbara is adrift. Unable to let go of her pain, as it is the last remaining link to her son, she moves through her days like a ghost.
Grieving is a deeply personal act, but it is also a cultural one, as the women discover when they arrive in Africa. Here suffering is almost a communal act, a means to understand and share and in so doing heal. In his book Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis wrote about the near catastrophic losses faced by much of Africa: No one is untouched. Virtually every country in East and southern Africa is a nation of mourners. Almost everyone, from the smallest baby to the most elderly grandmother has lost someone they loved.
Volunteering in orphanages, youth centres and feeding stations, the movement back towards life takes place slowly, and with halting steps. This is especially true in the case of Mary Helena, who suffered a stroke after her son’s death. Unabashedly and often brutally honest, Motherland wears its convictions openly and with deep grace.
Emerging Visions Audience Award, 2009 SXSW Film Festival
Jury Prize for Best Feature, 2009 Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival
Best Documentary, 2009 California Independent Film Festival
“Losing a parent is a life phase, something we're conditioned mentally and perhaps biologically to endure. Losing a child so reverses the pattern that parents grieving for children feel they've entered a strange and solitary new world. That world is the subject of a touching and informative new documentary Motherland.”
– Huffington Post
Director’s biography
Jennifer Steinman is a freelance editor who has established herself professionally as a creative storyteller, with a keen sense of pace and timing and the ability to tap into the heart and emotion of a story. She was a staff editor at CBS, both in New York and San Francisco and her work has aired nationally on PBS, The Discovery Channel, Showtime’s Sundance Channel, The Food Network and many other television networks. Steinman's films have screened at major film festivals including San Francisco International, Rotterdam, and Sundance. She has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Editing.
