Invictus: A Story of Grit // Short film

This short film is the culmination of about 2 months of work for my graduate Digital Storytelling class, however, the whole journey and the output was really more for me and for my family - as a way of honoring my father, as a way of appreciating my stepmother, and as a way to just express gratitude to the universe for giving us more days together.

My goals over the last handful of years, and especially in my creative work, have been opening up to vulnerability, finding comfort in silence and slowness (perhaps a push back on our fast-paced digitally “loud” lives), and crafting deeper connections with nature and the internal self as a way to help others. I partly see this project as a way for my father to recognize his own strength and resilience, as well. As such, Invictus: A Story of Grit, is my first foray into this kind of storytelling. I had never shot or edited video before this project. I learned A LOT both technically and artistically… like, really, a lot. I mean, that’s why I’m doing this, right?

A huge challenge in making this film was a way to balance appropriate pacing with my desire for the viewer to sit in the silence, practice patience, and to maybe even feel frustration about the speed of communication that nonverbal people experience.

In conceptualizing and producing this project, I was deeply inspired by a journalist-artist I met at Images and Voices of Hope Summit in 2017, a convening of a wide array of media makers, educators, and thinkers who use media for world benefit, with a focus on resiliency and restorative narrative. I really loved “Whitman, Alabama” and how Jennifer Crandall spoke about her process. Her way of combining media forms while highlighting human connection beyond what divides us was very striking. The work was emotional, raw, and relatable - all feelings I try to evoke in much of my work and certainly wanted to in this project. This piece highlights her project well, “a project that interweaves poetry and documentary to illuminate the connections among Americans. The experiment also offers lessons for media practitioners on the value of breaking disciplinary boundaries.” Without the inspiration from this project, I never would have experimented with integrating poetry into a documentary-style video.

Here’s my artist statement:
Invictus: A Story of Grit by Sarah Jerger is a short documentary film (10 minutes) exposing a couple’s battle with laryngeal cancer and the upheaval it caused in their life - his as a patient, hers as a caregiver. The restorative narrative, infused with poetry, focuses on the raw and sometimes uncomfortable daily life of someone with a stoma and without a voice box, and most importantly, about resilience, strength, and love in the face of adversity. When presented in full, this film also carries with it a participatory transmedia component of empathy-inducing silence and nonverbal communication amongst participants. See more of Sarah’s work at http://sarahjerger.blogspot.com/.

Oh, and fuck cancer.

This film was on view during the 2018 Masters in Emergent Media Show at the Champlain College Art Gallery in Burlington, VT.