Capturing a Short Life

I have just seen information about this film posted HERE. It feels really important, so I am reposting about the film here. I think that I might try to get to Rhode Island to see it.

It seems both tragic and sad, but also good that someone has taken the time to document on film for a mass audience this subject of loss. Something that so many choose to turn away and hide from. That then we grieving parents who never stop loving or missing our babies are at times quieted by not wanting to make this person or that person uncomfortable. Not always of course are we quiet, but I have to admit that there have been moments when I choose not to say anything...

May this film break the silence.

Combining verité and interview footage with still photography, Capturing A Short Loss is a poignant documentary detailing the stories of four families who are dealing with the loss of a newborn baby. It portrays, in a sensitive, intimate and cinematic manner, the emotional, medical and ethical choices that parents are often faced with when they are told that their baby is incompatible with life. Although this subject matter is impossibly sad, the lives and relationships that evolve, even in this context, are not.

Few people are aware that in North America every year, tens of thousands of families are having to say goodbye to children they’ve only just met and millions more lose babies to miscarriage or stillbirth.

When a baby dies, it is not only an infant that is lost, but a toddler, a child, a teenager and an adult. An entire life, an entire future, disappears. There will be no first birthdays, no first steps, no first report cards, no first loves…instead there is an intense, impossible, few moments to say hello and goodbye.

This is not a film about death, it is, rather, a story about how critical it is to remember and celebrate the lives of these beautiful babies who are only with us for a moment, and how impossible it is to forget them.

CASL est un documentaire intime et cinématique qui combine vérité, entretiens et photographies, et racontent l’histoire de quatre familles qui vivent la perte imminente d’un nouveau-né. Sensible et intime, le film explore les choix émotionnels, médicaux et éthiques auxquels sont confrontés les parents lorsqu’ils doivent faire face au fait que leur bébé est incompatible avec la vie. Même si le sujet est impossiblement triste, les vies et les relations qui en découlent ne le sont pas. Ceci n’est pas un film sur la mort, mais plutôt, un rappel de combien il est important de se souvenir et de célébrer les vies de ces superbes bébés qui n’auront été avec nous que pour quelques instants, et combien il est impossible des les oublier.

The film is going to be screened at the Rhode Island International Film Festival on Wednesday August 6th at 5:00pm at the Columbus Theatre Arts Centre.