“Portrait of MeMe” by Amelia Ray
Beyond the a Short Official Premiere
“Portrait of MeMe” is a personal documentary about how we grieve and remember–– as individuals and as a collective. The film centers two people on different sides of the same loss: Kate “Meme” Houston, a widow, and her granddaughter Amelia. As they unravel the events of the death, old tensions arise.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
“With “Portrait of MeMe,” I wanted to investigate the human experience of grieving, using my own experience as the framework. My first experience with death was losing my grandfather as a child, and it shaped who I am and how I process difficulty. Ten years later, I began imagining a piece that celebrates my grandmother’s life— perhaps a subconscious attempt to begin processing her eventual death. Throughout development, I realized I hadn’t considered what MeMe’s experience grieving her husband was like because I was entrenched in my own grief. I saw this as an opportunity to have an honest discussion— through the lens— about how we chose to deal with it and what parts of it we hid from each other.
The film was shot in Coosada, AL, where MeMe was born and has lived most of her life. Having been born and raised in the deep South, my artistic identity is strongly informed by folk aesthetics. At the same time, I have complicated feelings about my upbringing, and I do not shy away from that in the film. MeMe’s response to my grandfather’s death is, in my observation, deeply rooted in Southern feminine ideals. This is a conclusion I drew while gathering the archival material of the film: a home video shows a room full of Southern women mingling after a Methodist wedding, kodacolor paints a twenty-two-year-old MeMe with her firstborn, military husband and all. I use these materials to make sense of myself and to isolate my inherited cultural ideals. I, and by extension, Portrait of MeMe, am interested in the interior worlds of women that are shaped by deep cultural, geographic, and religious forces.
During the time of production, several crew members were mourning recent family deaths of their own. The relationships that we formed throughout the making of this film reflect its values: the need to confide in one another and to use artistic practice as a means to process difficult emotions. The love that we have for each other is embedded in this film.”
-Amelia Ray
Credits
Director & Cinematographer// Amelia Ray
Executive Producer// Lynn Houston
Lead Producer// Aaron Cecil Price
Producer// Shin Yu Liu
Associate Producer// Jackson Cropper
Editor// Alia Toorani
Sound Design// Mark Otim
Composer// Leia Bulger
Colorist// Rutuj Acharya
Graphic Designer// Chloe Farlow
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