Official Trailer for RE:MEMBER
RE-MEMBER TRAILER from Katie Teague on Vimeo.
Synopsis:
"In 2012, Victoria Markham's three and 1/2 year old son, Koa Markham, died suddenly in an accident. Shattered and bereaved, she stepped vulnerably into her grief walk in order to recover her will to live. What she encountered as a bereaved mother was further traumatizing: a deep aversion to grief in our culture and a lack of emotional intelligence to journey with her into the dark world of sorrow."
"In 2012, Victoria Markham's three and 1/2 year old son, Koa Markham, died suddenly in an accident. Shattered and bereaved, she stepped vulnerably into her grief walk in order to recover her will to live. What she encountered as a bereaved mother was further traumatizing: a deep aversion to grief in our culture and a lack of emotional intelligence to journey with her into the dark world of sorrow."
Director's Statement
"In October of 2017, I was introduced to Victoria Markham when she was seeking a filmmaker to help tell her story. I was immediately captured by the heartbreak of Koa's death, her transformation through the agent of grief, and her unyielding passion for making a sacred space for grief in our culture. It was clear to me that she is a genuine carrier of an important message.
Over the following months we dialogued deeply, both building rapport with each other and listening into how to tell this story. Then our filming began in earnest in July 2018, when I flew to Ashland, Oregon to document a three-day retreat she facilitated with four other bereaved mothers. It was intimate and profound and it affected me. I was beginning to more clearly sense the timely need for this film, that it could serve (beyond child loss specifically) our culture more broadly that is in the throes of systemic breakdown, ecological disruption and loss of life and ways of being on a global scale. I walked away from those three days with Victoria's words echoing eerily in my head: "This film is for those who are to come next."
Less than four weeks later, my 18-year-old nephew Stephen was killed in a car accident, 20 seconds from home and one day away from leaving for his first year of college. He is my sister's son. There is no way I ever could have known that my only blood sister would be "the next."
I reluctantly left my devastated sister two weeks after Stephen's death to meet Victoria in the Southwest for our previously scheduled interviews with Joanne Cacciatore and Ted Wiard. These circumstances will always remain disturbingly uncanny, inexplicable, and so much greater than me.
What started as a compelling project, became a humbling, deeply personal and transformational one for me as the director. Naturally, my nephew’s death cooked me in my own grief stew, deepening my focus and relationship to the film, and thereby certainly influenced the film that eventually manifested. I walked the rough path of re:membering while making the film. I like to say “it’s the story underneath the story, that’s not in the story but that guided the story.”
I offer this film to you from the depths of my own broken heart.
Grief is a given in this life and a natural part of the human experience, meant to be experienced with others, communally not in isolation. Together, we can keep opening our hearts and metabolize our grief into gifts of beauty that are meant to be given back. Through tending our grief we increase our capacity to respond to the world with more compassion and emotional intelligence. Grief tending is an act of resurgence and regeneration. Needed now perhaps more than ever!"
May we be ripened together.
With love and humility,
Katie
Over the following months we dialogued deeply, both building rapport with each other and listening into how to tell this story. Then our filming began in earnest in July 2018, when I flew to Ashland, Oregon to document a three-day retreat she facilitated with four other bereaved mothers. It was intimate and profound and it affected me. I was beginning to more clearly sense the timely need for this film, that it could serve (beyond child loss specifically) our culture more broadly that is in the throes of systemic breakdown, ecological disruption and loss of life and ways of being on a global scale. I walked away from those three days with Victoria's words echoing eerily in my head: "This film is for those who are to come next."
Less than four weeks later, my 18-year-old nephew Stephen was killed in a car accident, 20 seconds from home and one day away from leaving for his first year of college. He is my sister's son. There is no way I ever could have known that my only blood sister would be "the next."
I reluctantly left my devastated sister two weeks after Stephen's death to meet Victoria in the Southwest for our previously scheduled interviews with Joanne Cacciatore and Ted Wiard. These circumstances will always remain disturbingly uncanny, inexplicable, and so much greater than me.
What started as a compelling project, became a humbling, deeply personal and transformational one for me as the director. Naturally, my nephew’s death cooked me in my own grief stew, deepening my focus and relationship to the film, and thereby certainly influenced the film that eventually manifested. I walked the rough path of re:membering while making the film. I like to say “it’s the story underneath the story, that’s not in the story but that guided the story.”
I offer this film to you from the depths of my own broken heart.
Grief is a given in this life and a natural part of the human experience, meant to be experienced with others, communally not in isolation. Together, we can keep opening our hearts and metabolize our grief into gifts of beauty that are meant to be given back. Through tending our grief we increase our capacity to respond to the world with more compassion and emotional intelligence. Grief tending is an act of resurgence and regeneration. Needed now perhaps more than ever!"
May we be ripened together.
With love and humility,
Katie
More Information on RE:MEMBER
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RE:MEMBER has officially been released into the wild. We kicked it off with a truly moving experience premiering it here in Ashland last night. It looked and sounded beautiful on the big screen. Even to those who had seen it at the pre-release screening said it was an “entirely different experience." The depth of response from the audience during the Q&A after the film was profound. The immediate impact felt. Ripples already moving outward.
And it is our intention that this film grow wings so that it reaches the people who are yearning for it and who it will serve: those lost wrestling with grief in the face of a grief-repressed culture, those yearning for more soulfulness in our being with one another, those aching for the real in a time of so much unraveling and heartbreak in the world. Slowly, our grief averse culture is changing as more and more people are presencing “grief work,” and through this film Victoria and I make our offering to this growing movement of the real and raw-heart unleashed in service of a more sane, more human, more ensouled world. A world that re:members. Now it’s time for our grassroots outreach to seed the film into the world. Starting with our immediate network: YOU. Please check out the film if you have not seen the trailer or film yet: www.rememberdoc.com. Please share with your networks by forwarding this newsletter or posting on social media. On the website you will see various options to purchase the film, including an option to gift it forward. We are offering a 20% discount on the film bundle (this includes the complete interviews with Francis Weller, Joanne Cacciatore and Ted Wiard: over 4 hours of footage altogether) through September 4. We are also hoping that many people will take the initiative to host a screening in their own neighborhood or community. The film is a beautiful tool for gathering friends or family or colleagues to initiate a deeper conversation, to honor and give expression to our personal and collective grief. We have provided a screening kit full of materials to guide the way. |
