{"id":3041,"date":"2013-09-16T22:40:35","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T03:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"Last year, film director Sarah Polley released her first feature length documentary,\u00a0<em>The Stories We Tell<\/em>. The subject: her own family. Specially, her mother, who died when she was eleven years old. The film's byline reads: \"A film that excavates "},"modified":"2013-09-17T23:54:29","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T04:54:29","slug":"the-stories-we-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/2013\/09\/16\/the-stories-we-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Stories We Tell&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, film director Sarah Polley released her first feature length documentary,\u00a0<em>The Stories We Tell<\/em>. The subject: her own family. Specially, her mother, who died when she was eleven years old. The film&#8217;s byline reads: &#8220;A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ytq4VZ2Nyxg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em>The Observer<\/em> in June, Kate Kellaway published an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2013\/jun\/23\/sarah-polley-stories-we-tell-interview\" target=\"_blank\">extended review<\/a> of the film that included an interview with Polley. In the review, Kellaway states that the plot of the film is less important than the deeper themes it broaches. &#8220;What\u00a0gives the film its distinction,&#8221; she writes, &#8220;are the questions it raises that reach beyond plot: do we own our own stories or do they own us? Is there such a thing as emotional copyright? And why is memory a teasing resource?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the extended quote below, Kellaway shares some of her interview with Polley and follows it with thought-provoking analysis of her own:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I tell Sarah I have been speculating about Michael&#8217;s [Polley&#8217;s father&#8217;s] writing and her film-making and wondering: were they each driven by the same need to control out-of-control experience? &#8220;I was more concerned the film should include everybody&#8217;s version and not be one-dimensional,&#8221; Sarah says, but concedes: <em><strong>&#8220;Telling stories is our way of coping, a way of creating shape out of a mess. It binds everyone together.&#8221;<\/strong> <\/em>Yet her film also reveals that everyone has a subtly different story to tell. Memory is not a convenient barn in which truth can be stored through successive winters. It is permeable, unreliable and personal. And it is complicated because, in a family, as Polley points out, everyone is &#8220;committed&#8221; to their own version of the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Polley&#8217;s film&#8211;and Kellaway&#8217;s review&#8211;point us back to the statement Kelly and Jeremy Elliott made in our Spotlight session this week: &#8220;We create meaning through narratives.&#8221; We don&#8217;t remember and retell an index of precise details from our lives; we remember and retell selectively constructed narratives that move beyond details to discover and communicate meaning.<\/p>\n<p>But what happens when our constructed narrative doesn&#8217;t match someone else&#8217;s narrative of the same events? Who, if anyone, gets to determine the meaning of the events? Is the &#8220;truth&#8221; the precise details of the event or the meaning of the event?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, film director Sarah Polley released her first feature length documentary,\u00a0The Stories We Tell. The subject: her own family. Specially, her mother, who died when she was eleven years old. The film&#8217;s byline reads: &#8220;A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1934],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-post"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3T2tB-N3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3041"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3046,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions\/3046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}