Long Island documentary filmmaker Gayle Kirschenbaum will be coming to Roslyn’s Bow Tie Cinemas Mother’s Day weekend to show and discuss her new movie “Look At Us Now, Mother!”
Kirschenbaum, whose only previous full-length directing credit was 2004’s “A Dog’s Life: A Dogamentary,” chose a much more intimate subject matter for her sophomore effort.
“I never expected to make such a deeply personal film,” Kirschenbaum said. “I had spent most of my career behind the camera telling other people’s stories, but it soon became apparent that the highly charged relationship I had with my mother and its transformation from hate to love was a story I had to tell.”
Comprised primarily of decades-worth of intimate family home movies and videos that were never meant for public viewing — from 8mm film coverage of Kirschenbaum’s outwardly “Leave it to Beaver-esque” childhood in an upwardly-mobile Long Island suburb, to personal family celebrations, fights, and even tragedies right up to the present — the film is a story of one determined woman’s quest to reconcile with and understand her past, which means forgiving her proud, narcissistic and formidable elderly mother, Mildred.
With equal parts humor and pathos, Kirschenbaum invites the audience to take this epic journey along with her — an odyssey of discovery with no bump in the road edited out.
When Mildred grudgingly agrees to participate in the process, the two of them uncover shocking family secrets and long-buried suffering that throw their family history into sharp relief, and begin to shift the dynamics of their complex relationship.
“Look At Us Now Mother!” may be about one mother-daughter relationship, but its insights and lessons are universal.
Kirschenbaum brings her unique brand of fearless honesty and laugh-aloud humor to a film that took decades to shoot, about a relationship that took a lifetime to mend.
The event will take place May 6.
Kirschenbaum also worked as producer on a number of reality-based television shows, including “Ancient Mysteries,” “Mysteries of the Bible” and “Biography.”
