Building Bridges

(Construyendo Puentes)

This film tells the story of losing my mother, the anger and the grief, accessed and expressed through the medium of dance and performance art.

About the Film

 

I was thinking of ways to keep my elderly participants who attended my classes in Southampton entertained when lockdown first started and I asked my mum what she was doing to keep herself occupied. She told me she was dancing and knitting. I suggested she make a short video of herself and maybe I could use the film to inspire the elders. She agreed and some of the footage can be seen in this film.

Sadly a few weeks later she contacted me with the devastating news that she had cancer. I immediately flew to Mexico to visit her in hospital. We talked about what was happening to her and I suggested we record our conversations in the same way we had done for Bitter Pineapples. At the time I didn’t know why I was doing this, I had no plan to make a film. I secretly recorded and filmed conversations with the doctors as well as I felt something wasn’t right. There was a lot of underhand things going on, corruption, things you couldn’t imagine or wouldn’t expect from doctors.

It was an honour to be with my mum when she died, and to film her last breaths.

After she had died I felt so desperate. I was angry with the hospital, the doctors hadn’t told us that she was entitled to palliative care. She should have had that. It saddens me that she didn’t receive the care she should have done at that time.

I took the pictures to honour her death. I know some people questioned what I was doing. But for me, and I know for my mum as well, it was the right thing to do. To document her experience in the hospital. My mum fought through so much pain, refusing to be anaesthetised. She wanted to feel. This film is to honour her suffering and her death.

Through the film, I hope to encourage conversations between people who suffer from cancer or who have been through similar experiences. Maybe it will inspire them to have conversations with their mother too…

I’d be very grateful if you could fill out this brief feedback form after watching the film, a big thank you in advance.

Building Bridges with Spanish subtitles

“How people die remains in the memory of those who live on.”

Dame Cicely Saunders

The film’s impact

 

  • I found this film very moving. I was really struck by the window shutters and felt in myself an experience to block things out, but it always creeps in.

    The work made me nostalgic about my own relationship with my mum and her life experience and how that affected her and in turn me.

    I think it is so important to see this conversation, this meeting and the building of bridges with your mum; it has inspired hope that maybe my mummy and I can someday speak freely and safely.

    I felt you are very brave to film your mum’s last breaths and am grateful to feel peace in myself as I watch her breathing.

    The images in the final scene as memories were particularly strong, for me.

    I love you and I love your work. You crossed a line of unspoken boundaries and experience. I think so many of us could benefit from these frank and open communications with our parents and as you say, “Perhaps I can not make peace with my grandparents or my father, but at least I can make peace with you.”

    I sense that your mum was able to hold your questioning, without blame or accusation, on either part.

  • Particularly powerful is the co-creative process involving Gabriel’s expression of anger and grief through dance and performance art, and Gabriel’s mother’s voice, which shone through, even as she was facing her final moments. For both mother and son, this was an important collaborative piece as it not only allowed for both to express their deep love for and bond with one another, but also to help both of them to accept and make peace with the fact she was are dying. Even though this was a story of personal loss and sorrow, so too did it offer a platform for communal mourning for those that had come together to watch the film, allowing us to reflect on the meaning of loss and sorrow more widely, but also to share and explore our own experiences of grief. As we shared tears of sadness and joy by remembering our own beloved ones, we all felt that Building Bridges was cathartic.

  • The film is a very honest personal reflection which was deeply moving.

  • Gabriel's film is a brave and fascinating combination of creativity and insight into a private yet universal relationship.

  • Gabriel’s film was deeply moving, and the moment where he screamed out in the agony of his grief touched me profoundly, taking me back to the moment eleven years ago when I had done exactly that in the depths of my own grief for my beloved mum. What a release it was.