Experiencing Interruptions?

Instructions on Parting

Weaving cinéma vérité family footage with breathtaking vignettes of nature unfolding, INSTRUCTIONS ON PARTING tells an elegiac story about transformation, grief, and the essential nature of the collective human journey. As Director Amy Jenkins welcomes her first child into the world, she also must negotiate the cancer diagnoses of her mother, sister, and brother, all of whom fall ill within the same year. Crafted from Jenkins’ video journals and narrated through archived answering machine messages, Jenkins, a visual artist, turns her camera to interrogate loss. Her vulnerability leads us to a bold and daring acceptance of our own mortality and a reverence for the fleeting beauty of life.

  • Amy Jenkins
    Director
  • Mary Kerr
    Producer
  • Bara Jichova
    Editor
  • Laure Sullivan
    Editor
  • Noah Hoffeld
    Composer
  • Jim Dawson
    Sound Design
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 35 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    February 1, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3 /16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • The Museum of Modern Art Doc Fortnight
    New York
    United States
    February 16, 2018
    World Premiere
  • Athens International Film and Video Festival- WINNER
    Athens, OH
    WINNER, BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
  • Independent Film Festival Boston
    Boston, MA
    New England Premiere
  • Montclair Film Festival
    Montclair, New Jersey
  • Greenpoint Film Festival
    Brooklyn, New York
  • Sydney Film Festival
    Sydney
    Australia
    International Premiere
  • New Hampshire Film Festival- WINNER
    Portsmouth
    United States
    October 11, 2018
    WINNER- New Hampshire FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR Award
Director Biography - Amy Jenkins

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR Amy Jenkins is an American artist whose installations, films, and photography have been exhibited, screened and collected internationally. Her works, which focus on themes such as familial relationships, desire, and gender identity, have been shown at museums including The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Haifa Museum, Haifa, Israel; Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz, Austria; the Akron Art Museum, Ohio; Sioux City Art Center, IA; and Palm Beach ICA, FL. Her recent documentary feature, “Instructions on Parting,” won Best feature Documentary at Athens International Film and Video Festival, OH, and has screened at festivals including MoMA Doc Fortnight, Montclair, IFFBoston, and Sydney. Jenkins was chosen to be a LEF Foundation Robert Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow, and a two-time nominee for the CalArts Alpert Award in Film/Video. She received the 2018 NH FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR Award from the New Hampshire Film Festival. Her artwork has been reviewed in many publications, including The New York Times, ARTnews, Bomb, Artcritical, Performing Arts Journal, and The Village Voice. Visit her website at: www.amyjenkins.net

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

It is my goal to reinvigorate our conceptions of self and situation through visceral, visual storytelling. Engaging with the line of “truth” in documentary, I am fascinated with the unraveling of reality where the commonplace becomes surprising and unexpected. Often personal in nature, my work finds—in the comfort of the familial and familiar, in the crevices of the interior and domestic—the nearly invisible filaments that connect us to each other and to the wider world.