A funny, moving, sometimes heart-breaking story about the world of 11-year-old tweens, as seen through the lens of one fifth-grade class on their last day of elementary school. Portrays that very short time in life when childhood and adolescence coalesce, when it’s still okay to be a child, even as bigger life questions emerge.
Director’s Statement: Terence Brown
When my son was 11, he was beginning to think about the Bigger Things: love, death, sex, work. He’d ask us all kinds of hard questions about life, but still with a lot of childhood wonder. It was like he had enough information to start wondering and worrying, but not enough maturity to process it. I realized I had a really great, yet fleeting, opportunity as a film- maker to capture the inner lives of kids at this age.
Fri 09:50 AM Varsity 2 Sun 3:20 PM Varsity 2 Mon 3:20 PM Varsity 2
Synopsis
Shot at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, Mothering
Inside follows participants in the Family Preservation Project (FPP), an innovative program that helps inmate mothers rekindle and maintain bonds with their children. During the yearlong shoot, the Oregon Department of Corrections decided to close the FPP despite a zero recidivism rate. Luckily, the film has helped raise public awareness, and the Oregon legislature has passed a bill guaranteeing FPP’s survival for two more years. After that, who knows?
Director’s Statement: Brian Lindstrom
I think of the camera as a passport, and I’ve used it throughout my career to tell the stories of people who society puts an “X” through: newly recovering addicts, people with mental illness, and, in Mothering Inside, incarcerated mothers. I use cinema vérité because it allows a direct relationship between the viewer and the subject.
