This month audiences can screen Material Bodies on the Planet Classroom Network. This film is curated by Planet Classroom.
Material Bodies, from director Dorothy Allen-Pickard, is a sensual and imaginative look at the relationship between amputees and their limbs. The story explores how a prosthetic leg can be more like a piece of jewelry, a dance companion, or a part of you.
The film interweaves dance and dialogue to share certain messages about the participants’ feelings towards having a prosthetic leg.
The Global Search for Education welcomes Director Dorothy Allen-Pickard.
Dorothy, what inspired the story in Material Bodies?
Caitlin McMullan, who is one of the interviewees in the film, was researching how the sensory and aesthetic properties of materials can affect experiences of prosthetic limbs, and this research project was the inspiration behind Material Bodies.
Why did you make certain scenes in the film focus on different types of material? What are they supposed to represent?
We filmed an additional layer of footage on 16mm that included video portraits of the participants set against different coloured material backgrounds, as well as the participants interacting with different abstract objects and materials. This came from Caitlin’s original focus of research, which was about how the sensory and aesthetic properties of materials can affect experiences of prosthetic limbs. Daria Martin’s videos, Soft Materials and Birds, provided some inspiration for abstract compositions of people interacting with materials, but most of it was created on the day of the shoot with Marianne Auvinet Gould, the production designer.
What do you want people to take with them after watching your film?
I wanted to make a beautiful film that uses dance, design and dialogue to illustrate the point that you’re only as disabled as your environment makes you.
What are you working on next?
I’m currently working on a short staged documentary with three women who were targeted by British undercover police officers who infiltrated activist networks and forged relationships with female members. We are looking to reclaim their stories by staging and dissecting scenes from their lives, dramatizing the events under scrutiny. The film will pose pressing questions around the role of police surveillance and impunity, the layers of betrayal experienced by those deceived, and their search for justice.
Thank you Dorothy!
C.M. Rubin with Dorothy Allen-Pickard
Don’t Miss Material Bodies, now streaming on the Planet Classroom Network. This film is curated for the Planet Classroom Network by Planet Classroom
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