#7: Witches
Elizabeth Sankey's personal exploration of maternal mental illness.
Just a quick one this evening, prompted by being advertised Elizabeth Sankey’s documentary Witches online again. I saw the film, in which filmmaker and musician Sankey uses the cultural trope of witches to explore maternal mental illness, at this year’s London Film Festival.
Sankey suffered from a severe depression shortly after her son’s birth: they ended up staying in a mother and baby unit, which is a residential specialist ward whose facilities mean the infant does not need to be separated from their mother. It turns out that the UK has an ok provision of MBUs; I am aware that at least one of my friends stayed in one in their early years. This is in contrast to the experience writer and literary agent, Catherine Cho, experienced when she experienced post-natal psychosis on a trip back to the States. Sankey interviews Cho, mum friends she made through a supportive online network and some of the women she met during her time on the ward, as well as the widower of a British psychiatrist whose suicide and killing of their child prompted greater investment into pre-and post-natal mental health provisions.
It’s these women’s testimonies, rather than the video essay lens (how many times can clips of 90s film The Craft be used by subsequent filmmakers and critics to demonstrate their point?) that makes the film distinctive. I was as much struck by the women who weren’t sharing their stories as were: Sankey is able to get artists, academics and medical professionals to discuss their depressive episodes and psychosis, but the absence of working class women, and those in modern professions such as marketing or banking, indicates just how stigmatised these illnesses remain. Towards the end of the film, Sankey is joined onscreen by her partner and their son, with the little boy also being shot on his own in the different sets used as backdrops for the talking heads: warm, country kitchen to depict domestic bliss; an unloved ward whose walls and decor are tinged with a colour close to algae. As more of the people around me start to have children, the film’s lasting impact on me was that I vowed to be as non-judgemental a friend to the expecting and new mums in my orbit as possible. The only thing worse than having a crazy thought is feeling it is too crazy to even mention, for fear you will be locked up or have your baby taken off you.
Witches is 90 minutes long and available to watch on Mubi. This link will give you a 30 day free trial; I don’t think I will get a tote bag again if three of you continue with a subscription, which is a shame as I think my referral tote got lost in the post earlier this year. But, for the sake of transparency, I’m flagging that I may benefit in case you decide you like it!