My mother died of cancer in 2014, leaving me as a young teenager trying to make sense of this loss. For the funeral, my job was to create the slideshow of her life.
I am now a documentarian. With the ten year anniversary of her death looming, I've decided to return to the family photo archive that I went through while making the slideshow. But this time, I want to find every single photograph of my mom in existence.
“The Angie Archive” is an experimental documentary about my emotional experience throughout this process of trying to find every single existing photograph of my mom. The film, in essay style, also engages with ideas about the role of photography in the grieving process, the purpose of the family photo archive, and how death alters the meaning of these images.
As I search through family photo albums and reach out to others in my mother’s life who may have any pictures of her, I have to contend with changing technology, disorganization of family photos, and the knowledge that truly locating every photo is an impossible task. Told through voiceover documenting my experience combined with abstract imagery, animation, and of course, family photos, the film visually documents my experiences like a journal or scrapbook.
