CHAPTER 1: MOTHERPLANT

↑ Rory Pilgrim - The Undercurrent

I really wanna have a similar feeling as with this sequence.
Focussing on the interiors between different places, maybe in a split screen creating similarities and differences.

In a split screen, the chapter starts inside the homes of the mother in Germany and grandmother in Kyiv.
The difference between these houses is clear, one old, colourful and full. The other is more selected, modern, one toned.
The different quality of the images makes the viewer wonder, when these shots are made.

born not here but there,
my mother born somewhere else than me,
And her mother born even somewhere else than her

Small - hard shelled creatures
Of potential
we were neither plant yet - nor anymore

The camera captures the details of these indoor places. It looks inside the cupboards, moving across the paintings on the wall, the pictures on the desks.
Side by side, the shots of these two different places, highlight the close connection between the women that inhabit these houses, but also show their differences in generation, time and place.

my tongue
It always struggled, while my ears always remember her,
Learning the birdsongs of her foreign place I grew up here

Here - my motherplant
Always almost not in scarcity
Always almost not a stranger
She tried to never make me feel that way

Herself,
she had as little and as much as everyone around her too.

Memories flashing by, as we move through the spaces.
Between these pictures, appear the hands of the protagonist, weaving flower curtains.

We braided flowers
to surface the iron curtains,
Behind that concrete walls

On balconies, we sit, and watch
As dreams pass by the window

This peaceful scene and quiet scene slowly ruptures by the sound of western news footage of reporting on the sudden independence of Ukraine and the fall of the soviet union. The images of it appear on a big television in the mothers home.

This scene is framed and explained through a skype conversation between the daughter and her mother. In German, the mother explains the complexity, difficulties and hopes surrounding the times in the 90’s, and how, under this background, she moved away from Ukraine to Germany. As she says how her reality changed with the crossing of the border, the film transitions into the next chapter.

Our homes, creating seat coats
Protecting layers
Protecting us
Even from ourselves

↑ Indisch Zwijgen

I find this szene really beautiful, soft and poetic and want to get similar scene, in which I use the flower curtains I made.