Portrait of Jamaican-American artist, performer poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin,who has been struggling with the notion of how to be a good mother. It’s a struggle that she has been wrestling with she was abandoned by her own mother decades before.
While I know that this is a great and moving film, I am also very aware that I am the wrong person to be writing up this film. This is a film about mothers and daughters and how they view each other and while I can get some of that being a person with parents, the fact that I am not a woman diminished some of the resonances that I should have felt.
That said, A MOTHER APART is kick ass film. It’s a film that in exploring the relationship between mothers and daughters the film also forces us to consider how we connect to our parents and children. It’s a film that asks a lot of difficult questions but also raises a great deal of hope. It’s clear that even though Chin‘s mom wasn’t there she still found a way to grow and thrive. As the film says some times the bumps are a way of parenting.
I loved this film. When it was done I was emailing the ladies on my email list to tell them to put this on their must see list.
Recommended.