Tell Me (short)
About the Film
Synopsis
Tell Me is an intimate portrait of the relationship between the filmmaker and her father. Daring to ask the most personal questions, Mitchell captures heartbreak, humour and our universal mortality in three evocative minutes.
A Conversation With My Father
I reviewed the questions with my 74 year old father before hand, but he didn’t offer to answer any of them. And he didn’t answer them during the filming. When the crew reminisced about their own fathers and the questions they never asked, my father remained silent.
After the shoot ended, I was at my parent’s house recording narration. I asked my father if he would now answer some of the questions. I began with the most innocuous.
ME: What’s your favorite time of day?
HIM: (without hesitation) Midnight.
ME: Why midnight?
HIM: That’s when I go to bed.
I checked my watch. It was two minutes to midnight.
My father answered my questions by making this film with me. He likes to say, “He didn’t do bad for an amateur.”
Production Notes
Tell Me was commissioned as part of a documentary celebrating the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative’s 30th anniversary. The criteria was a 3 minute film, with a total budget of $3000. I received the call a week before deadline. I was ready to make the heartbreaking decision to decline the offer, when the narrative for the film came to me as a poem. We shot in one day, we cut it in two. From the initial call to completion, the film was delivered in a week.
The film works on one level as an exploration of personal and generational relationships. It is a father/daughter story. But on another level it also examines the aggressive prodding of the camera and the manipulation of the edit as it pushes closer and closer on its subject, demanding more than a surface image. The mechanics of making the film are constantly being referenced to remind the audience of the construct- the artificiality of this intimacy.
I couldn’t be certain how my father would respond at the end of the film. As it turned out I can’t imagine any other answer. He flips the piece on its head and I can’t help but laugh.