Milk

How can you miss something you never really had? Filmmaker Miranda Stern knows little about her mother, who died when Miranda was five months old. Now that she is recovering from a heroin addiction and contemplating motherhood herself, she wants to break the silence. By opening up the old boxes of things, she hopes to discover the mother she never knew. But first she needs to confront her own feelings of guilt and shame.

For this liberatingly honest graduation film, Stern assembled the messy, imperfect, broken, joyful, sad and desperate bits of life. She rewinds, pauses and slows down the footage as if she might find her mother hiding somewhere between the frames. In a remarkable montage she embraces the very absences, gaps and silences.

Stern’s piecing together of the digital, Super8, 16mm and VHS footage resembles the Japanese art of kintsugi, where the pieces are imperfect and the cracks remain visible. Just like with the making of films, this journey will never really be completed.