2006 Films   •   2006 Film Festival

Director - Jennifer Hardacker
Category - Experimental
RT-12m32s

The stories referred to in the title of "Ghost Stories" are revealed through the interplay and overlap of the various voices that reveal personal history and contextualize it by placing it within a broader historical and social context. The maker has chosen the plural title 'Ghost Stories' as a way of foregrounding these multiple voices that provide perspective on early motherhood and personal history The first way the mother, Debbie's, voice is portrayed is visually through images of her journal entries. Debbie's journal entries reveal her hopes for the future, her thoughts about early motherhood, and anxiety about her relationships with men. This ghost story both links and contrasts Debbie's life experience with that of Diana, her story's heroine, who chooses to live outside the boundaries of traditional marriage and therefore incurs society's wrath. At one extreme is Diana's freedom to swim and run naked alone in the dunes. At the other extreme is Debbie's constrained life as a harried young mother working as a waitress and school bus driver. The maker's voice also emerges in her choice of archival informational film clips that obliquely address the relationship between her mother and herself, and how their childrearing experiences relate to society at large. These clips provide additional voices in which three young mothers speculate about the personal costs of early pregnancy – says one, "All your dreams are shot to hell, you know you miss them, they're not there - your dreams are all washed out."

2006 Sponsors