Judith Helfand: "This connects me to thousands of people if not millions who have lost parents and are now asking important existential questions about the quality of their relationships"
HOTDOCS2020CLAPPER: The documentary touches on some very happy and very sad aspects of your life, but overall it has a positive feel to everything that's been going on. Was this intentional to try and keep the tone on the optimistic side.
JUDITH HELFAND: Tone is really important to me, it takes a while to find the tone, it always does. And I think that tone is as much a part of the language of the movie as the visuals, or the narration and music In my case, which are big elements. Tone is a living breathing thing and once you strike it and you find it, it tells you what it needs to be, and when it's not working, you really know it you could feel it. So, if it's optimistic or quirky as I'd like to think about it, or, somewhere between optimistic and practical and spiritual, and stuck in grief. It was definitely intentional. I'm glad you think it's optimistic!
Have you shared your experiences within this film with anyone who has suffered from the DES drug? If so, what were their thoughts?
I actually haven't yet. The film has only been out in Canada and in Ontario. Now there are lots of def expose people in Ontario. This movie is quoting from another movie I made (A Healthy Baby Girl). And so that movie was truly embraced by the DES community. They really felt like I had found that I've been able to sort of hit the head and to be able to explore and expose the real pain and suffering that mothers and daughters and mothers and families, experienced, because of the harm that the DES drug created, and it was never the kind of harm that the court of law, which is where most people have worked out their DES stories and a lot of ways never captures the damage and never captures the nuance.
It never captures what it means to sort of grow up and grow old, in step with your mother, who you love more than anything in the world. I can only imagine that they will deeply appreciate this movie. And then, the reason being that most of what this movie shows is that, you know, something like that wound that was created by the DDS story. I mean, it might work itself through but you never really ever fully are able to completely let go of it. And then when you're harmed by toxic chemical exposure, it stays with you for the rest of your life. And then influences your life.
I'm looking forward to sharing it with them. I mean I think it'll be really interesting. When I made A Healthy Baby Girl that came out in 1997, almost 25 years ago. So, I think that that's gonna be. Do the math, I might be wrong. I think we've all grown up, we've all endured, and I mean this story is also, you know, the big long term impact of that drug was, I felt so horrible, my mother never got to see me as a mother, and that was such an important thing for me.
I'd like to believe that she's around and she could see in some way and she knows what's going on and she could feel it. But, you know, this is a story about holding on to grief and holding on to the hope that you could undo that grief, and that you could take away a little bit of pain. My journey to become a mother is in lockstep with, in many ways, wanting to be a mom. I also wanted my mom to see me as a mom so she wouldn't die. So I think it's interesting that this movie lets me grow that pain and let it evolve and let people kind of see what the long term impact is a very egregious decision by pharmaceutical companies to really not care about, you know, care about the people who think it, you know, to people who aren't trusting them with their futures.
How difficult is it to make a film that is so personal talking about your medical history loss of your mother and I know you are at times brutally honest about your strengths and perceived failures. So did you have any doubts about putting these experiences in the public eye?
I've made a lot of first-person movies after I made Lugano, and then I made the show because it felt at the end of the world. I recently made a movie called Cooks Survival by Zip Code. It's not personal though, but I do narrate it. It is a process movie and I do take people on the journey of research and piecing that story together. I chose to make this movie because most of the things that I'm dealing with in the film are completely universal.
Unfortunately, everybody is going to experience the death of their mother or their father or a loved person in their life. And if they're lucky they're gonna get to help them die. I mean I think that this moment why this movie is coming out is a moment when people can't see their loved ones, when they're dying. And I can't think of anything worse than being separated from the people that you love the most in the world. In a moment when they need you the most at the last moment of their life, you want to be there. So, at a time when I was experiencing that and then when I was experiencing my mother being dying, and that horrible feeling of, you know, opening up the back door of the apartment and she's not there and you're systematically had to go through that stuff, being the long road of grief or becoming a mother when your mother's not around.
And those are not things that I'm going through by myself, I know as I share those moments with millions of people. I just don't know them, while I'm going through it, but it gave me a lot of hope to think this is not unique. You're not inventing grief. You now belong to this club. It feels good to sort of share what I know are things that people or people will go through or they have gone through, and to offer them, in some ways, a primer. I felt I felt like I wasn't by the very act of sharing it with people, it made me feel a lot less alone. And I knew that when people got close to this material. They would feel a deep connection, or at least I hope they will.
So what's the response been from the other older mothers out there? do you see this as in some ways motivating for others to show that they can do the same because you seem to have taken motherhood well in fairness?
Well, I don't know because this is a virtual. I have not been at any of these screenings. I am dying to know what the screenings are like and how are people responding to this and what is it making them think about? is it inspiring them?
When I made the little short, I made a little short Call and Stuff. That was the inspiration for the feature. And that time, I'm on the New York Times website, and from that that I know, I have proof that movie inspired people to go home and talk to their parents and deal with stuff in their parents’ houses, way before their parents died because they saw my movie.
I spent three days and I learned so many things. There's maybe a 1000 people that have watched this movie in Ontario I'm not sure maybe a hundred good reviews, I have not been able to do a live q&a with anybody yet so I don't really have that response. I'm dying to know which is why we're actually doing a q& on Monday, June 22.
I'm hungry for that experience. That's the reason to have a world premiere at a film festival is that every question that you're asking me about is how are people responding, I guarantee. It's in Ontario, lots and lots of DES-exposed people would have come. They know my work, they would have been there, lots of new old moms and older parents and, 95-year-Olds, they'd say "it works, don't worry I'm 50 years older than my kid and he's 45 now. We're fine. Don't worry" I know I would have experiences that I haven't had yet.
In the film you come across as a warm likeable character. Is there a worry when you make something as personal as this about how you will come across to an audience.
I worry about it and you can't worry too much about it. Definitely, in the editorial process you're constantly asking yourself, do you believe her. Do you like her? Does she sound whiny? You're constantly asking a lot of hard questions on your account. And I think you would do that with any character, personal or not. When you make a movie, you're constantly looking at characters and you're trying to make them complex, and you're trying to not make them perfect and you're trying to offer the world, in a way to look at something through the character's eyes, and hopefully, they're not complex.
So I'm complex and definitely not perfect. You're constantly thinking about “Is this too personal? Does this is this navel-gazing? Is this going to come off in a way that's someone is going to think” I'm annoying sure I mean how can you not think about those things but if you're asking the right questions of the movie, and you're pushing yourself to be the most authentic that you can be and your editors. Marina Katz and David Cohen are constantly pushing you to be my most authentic self at all times.
You have to believe when the movie comes out all those elements will be in there. There'll be authenticity and warmth. Someone's gonna be uncomfortable as it is too personal. For those viewers, it's about pushing them to think things they don't want to think about, maybe, all those things will happen and you just have to let it go and say, it's the most honest authentic story that I can do and I know that this is not just my story alone. This connects me to thousands and thousands of people if not millions of people who have lost two parents or who become a parent who are asking really important existential questions about the quality of their relationship with their family and with their children, and who are struggling with that whole idea of like what is it that I really want to leave.
I found this to be in some ways, eye-opening to aspects of Jewish faith I wasn't familiar with. What's important to your faith in the documentary?
It's been, a really central, organic part of my life. Because I believe it. It gives me a way to sort of see an experience. I don't think it's so much a movie of a social justice lens, through the European Jewish cultural lens, but through a multicultural lens because we belong to a very multicultural Jewish community.
This movie is about life and death and grief and growth and family, and the circular nature of life and ritual is such a big part of that. It was really difficult without Shiva, without Shiva, I wouldn't have been able to get through the grief of losing my mother, I desperately needed that. The Jewish holidays were and are an anchor, and it's my job to I try to make it an anchor for my kid. So it was very important to me. I mean, all my movies feel Jewish, they do.
Do you find that documenting your life proved to be motivational in making changes you wanted to make?
Oh, definitely. There are things that are really hard for me, for the stuff is hard. Organization is hard, Grief is hard. Packing up stuff and letting go of stuff, is very hard. Losing weight to be a much healthier, and energetic mom and having heart, definitely helped. Film is a very collaborative thing and I seem to have brought film into my life in moments of crisis for myself, and moments of crisis for this planet, I've been making movies about the crisis and climate change, and with the long term impact of structural racism.
Those are crises we have to deal with. It's a unique thing to uphold as a filmmaker because you're processing, very, very hard realities with a small group of people. So, it makes me feel less alone and makes me feel alive. It makes painful things feel, creative, energetic, you know, catalytic,
This documentary swings about as close to cinema verite as one can get, but there is an argument to say that having a camera present will always change the behaviour of your subject, to some extent. Where do you stand on this and do you think it applies to more personal films, where the filmmaker is the subject.
That's a really good question. I mean, this movie is so much about putting different pieces and elements and moments together, and it's in the editing that the story really “becomes”. I think it's in the case of this movie but I wouldn't say it's when you have the camera there is a change. I mean, of course, that's true and on the flip side, I think in this case when we put the kind of material together next to the current material, or the current Verite something changed.
There was this really interesting kind of course, and archival material became a really interesting portal. I wouldn't go past it could connect with my mom, I can come back to the present. In a way, I think we were kind of losing the archival material, maybe the way you're suggesting people use a camera, things change. So I think I have gotten used to in the cameras there, and I have to go through stuff. I mean, I guess you know what part of what I'm doing is documenting, which is a little bit of performance is a lot of documentation.
There's fun. There's irony. There's quirkiness. I have a connection with my core camera person Dan Gold, an old friend and collaborator. So, it comes to a lot of play, and somehow bringing the camera there. The thing that changes is it makes me think differently. It makes you think out loud it makes you look at the little world. And the metaphorical world around you, turning the camera there gives you a heightened awareness of how unique and important, all these things are, and how the things that we deem to be incredibly personal actually might be universal. The opposite of private, the act og making something public and creating an opportunity for deep connection with other people. And that's what I use the camera for.
LOVE AND STUFF premiered online at HOTDOCS 2020 and is currently scheduled for Q&A’s from Monday, June 22. Read CLAPPER’s review here
Words by Paul Anderson. Interview by Diego Andaluz