Private Project

From our mothers' arms

'From our Mothers' Arms' dwells upon place, ancestry, mortality and religion, triggered by the redevelopment of the artist's late Grandfather’s Baptist chapel on the Isle of Wight. The accompanying hymn, recorded at the last service at Wellow, reinforces Christian beliefs in creation and resurrection, which were upheld by Waterman's ancestors who frequented this village chapel. The film centres upon a telephone conversation between the artist and her mother made during lockdown, where she reflects upon her daughter’s last visit from London before the enforced separation. Broader notions of memory, ageing and family legacy is embodied within the photographic diptychs that capture her mother retreating into the same recognisable rural landscapes, encouraging us to follow in her footsteps in a spiritual journey across time and space.

  • Sally Waterman
    Director
  • Sally Waterman
    Writer
  • Sally Waterman
    Producer
  • Veronica Waterman
    Key Cast
    "Mother"
  • Sally Waterman
    Key Cast
    "Daughter"
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    July 31, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    500 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Southampton Film Week
    Southampton
    United Kingdom
    November 6, 2020
Distribution Information
  • Sally Waterman
    Country: United Kingdom
Director Biography - Sally Waterman

Sally Waterman is based in London. She received her MA Image & Communication from Goldsmiths, London in 1996 and a PhD in Media & Photography at the University of Plymouth in 2011. She has exhibited and screened her work extensively since 1996, including Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK; Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales, UK; Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery, London, UK; Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK; CCA, Glasgow, UK; Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Berlin Short Film Festival, Germany, Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Columbia; The Family Film Project International Film Festival, Porto, Portugal; 19th International Kansk Video Festival, Russia and the Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Turkey. Her work is held in various public collections including the National Art Library, V&A, London, John M. Flaxman Library, The School of Art Institute of Chicago and the Yale Center for British Art, New York. She was a visiting fellow at the University of London (2011-2012), where she organised the ‘Family Ties: Recollection and Representation’ conference, and is a founder member of the research group, Family Ties Network. She is a senior lecturer in photography at University for the Creative Arts, Rochester.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Sally Waterman creates poetic still and moving image works that explore memory, place and familial relationships, drawing upon writers such as Henry James, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. Her practice-based PhD used T.S Eliot’s 1922 poem, ‘The Waste Land’ as a framework to examine her self-representational strategies and adaptation methods, culminating in a collection of photographic and video installations (2005-2010). Waterman re-invents the source material through a fragmentary re-scripting exercise, seeking autobiographical associations with certain images, themes, characters or concepts. Indeed, the chosen literary text functions as a mechanism for self-representation, enabling the recollection and re-imagining of past trauma.