“If you want to understand any woman, you must first ask her about her mother and then listen carefully. – The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother’s life, without flinching or whining, the stronger the daughter’ – Anita Diamont
Womb Charts the filmmakers own vulnerabilities and strengths as an artist; questioning what it means to be a woman, as well as sisterhood and motherhood.
This project started through reading The Red Tent, a first-person narrative that tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, sister of Joseph. She is a minor character in the Bible. The main inspiration was the menstrual hut in which they shared food, stories and love once per month. This idea of sacred rituals of togetherness both intrigued me and scared me.
I wanted to build something physical,to be experienced and touched. We don’t remember being in the womb and I wanted to recreate something to show how cramped and loud and odd it would be. My fear or motherhood consumed in this one installation. My pinterest was full of ideas and concepts from Cathy Jenkins and Ernesto Neto, their installations showcased moulding and shaping textures to resemble our insides. I also picked up new skills like knitting as I knitted a womb wall made of red cotton.
I essentially split my research into three components, Imitation, internal inspection and spectatorship. Imitation is shown through replicating certain images in the media that caused fear in the online world for example, the woman bleeding onto her bedsheets and Instagram removed the image! Why?!
I want people to view this as an ongoing experiment, to find something interesting and weird and resonate with it. I think for me, I’m still fearful of womanhood and motherhood but I found a fear and a beauty.
Amber Amare is a Director, Cinematographer and Sound Recordist working in the UK. Amber has worked on a variety of short films, artist films and commercials. Notably, her work has been showcased at Aesthetica Film Festival, Darkroom Film Festival and London Sci-fi Film Festival. Amber works with a range of different mediums from installation art to digital textiles. Her own work focuses on womanhood, female form and gender. Follow her on Instagram.
Credits
Director – Amber Amare
Cinematography – Dajain Daley
Actress – Robyn Tannant
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