Mum! Mum!  is a short film in which artist Natasha MacVoy takes on the identity of ‘The Mother as Stunt Performer’, reflecting on the stunt performer’s paradox, where illusionary techniques deny their existence to the audience and their success is tied to their invisibility.

Mirroring MacVoy’s experience as a mother, the film’s use of repetition, rehearsal and visualisation is coupled to her own removal from the frame. It explores themes of doubling, masking and rehearsing through the language and techniques of a master wigmaker, a singer and an artist – three women with their own creative practices, but connected through their rural locality and their role as mothers.

Between fleeting glimpses of the Mother as Stunt Performer herself, the wigmaker meticulously replicates her hair in extraordinary detail, as the singer tentatively exercises and rediscovers her voice and rhythm after a long break from singing.

An underlying sense of tension and threat speaks to MacVoy’s personal experience of caring for a child with a thirst for knowledge, but whose overwhelming anxiety and misunderstood neurology makes the education system intolerable. Mum! Mum! represents the multiple ways in which the artist has learnt, adapted and changed the fabric of her world to provide an invisible support structure for her children who are neurodiverse and unable to access mainstream education.

This screening has the following Content Notices

ABOUT TWO SHORT NIGHTS: EXETER PHOENIX COMMISSION PREMIERE

Join us on closing night where Two Short Nights will platform this year’s Exeter Phoenix Short Film Commissions on the big screen for the first time. This screening celebrates the dedication, hard work and talent of a range of filmmakers and artists based in the south west. Remember, you saw them here first.  

Find out more >>

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Natasha MacVoy lives in Dursley, Gloucestershire, with a studio at Spike Island, Bristol. Her sculptural practice includes murals, ceramics, writing, performance and film to create installations and environments. Her work is a generous, gentle and complex study of mothering, identity, loss, gain and unconditional love through the lens of neurodiversity. In her practice she explores adaptative care and education in a broken system, expertise as protection and hope through radical connection.

Recent exhibitions include: OUTPOST Members’ Show curated by Amartey Golding, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich, 2022; Blush, ASC Gallery, London, 2022; tibrO yalP, g39, Cardiff, 2022; My Kid Could’ve Done That, The Edge Arts, Bath, 2021.

Mum! Mum! features master wigmaker Louise Davies and singer Sophie Newman. Camera work and support with editing and post-production were supplied by Oliver Sutherland.

www.natashamacvoy.com

VENUE: STUDIO 74, EXETER PHOENIX