Feature: A camera in the kitchen – Making Maverick Mother

Taking out two of this year’s EnhanceTV ATOM Awards, Janet Merewether’s very personal Maverick Mother is proving to be a program that resonates with audiences and educators. She talks to Off the air about filming her own story, motherhood, and surviving as an independent filmmaker.

At 39-years-old, Janet found herself without a partner and wanting a baby. She decided to put herself on a waiting list for donor sperm and, at the same time, she set up a camera in her kitchen and began filming.

Using video diaries, stills, performance and archival sequences, this hour-long documentary is a colourful, humorous and at times painful examination of birth, motherhood, and the changing nature of family. Janet does fall pregnant, but it’s from a night of “biological recklessness” involving a heavy metal concert and a one-night stand. Nine month’s later she gives birth to Arlo, with the camera in the kitchen documenting the highs and lows of pregnancy and parenting.

“I didn’t set out to tell my own story,” she said. “I wanted to look at the growing social trend of women who are over 35, wanting children and without a willing partner, and who decide to do it on their own. I was going to use several women’s stories, and I approached women I knew, but because it’s so personal, they were unwilling to be filmed.”

“When I made the decision to put my name on a sperm donor list, I had a camera at home from the previous film I’d made, and I just set it up on the kitchen bench,” she said.

The camera stayed there over the next 18 months, and it was not until Arlo was six months old that Janet approached SBS for funding for the film.

“I just kept filming until I knew I had a story,” she said. “I felt the subject matter was more important than my own squeamishness about revealing myself.”

One of the most difficult aspects of making the film was simply finding the energy to document, she said.

“With a new baby there are days when it’s hard enough to find a moment to eat. Technically, self-imaging also presents challenges – you’re using mirrors and tripods and it isn’t always easy. But I knew there was a value in recording the intimacy between a mother and a child. Many women stop creating at this time in their lives and it means there is a lot of invisibility around the experience of becoming a mother.”

Interestingly, the film also became more concerned with the role of the father as it progressed, through Janet’s attempts to contact Arlo’s father, and her conversations with her own father about her decision, and about being a parent.

“My father’s health was deteriorating as I was filming,” she said.  “And it was wonderful to see the relationship he had with Arlo.”

When Maverick Mother screened on SBS it had an audience that crossed ages and genders.

“It’s also done well internationally,” Janet said.

In fact, at its most recent screening at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, it picked up a Jury Special Mention for short documentaries and won the audience award for all the films in the competition.

The EnhanceTV ATOM Awards for Best Documentary General and Best Documentary Human Stories have also been a boost.

Part of the film’s appeal to educators and their students lies in its quirky visual style, but it’s also the fact that Maverick Mother places mothering and families in an historical context that ensures its broad appeal.

“It looks at the circumstances of solo mothers in the 19th century – when infanticide was the only option – to women in the '60s who had to relinquish their children,” Janet said.  “The choices we now have in Australia haven’t been a reality for long.”

Ensuring that a film reaches its audience involves close collaboration between the filmmaker and the distributor, and Janet hopes that the recent awards will increase Maverick Mother’s profile, particularly in the education sector.

“Some filmmakers handle sales themselves.” she said, “I don’t, but I partner with my distributor as much as I can.  I’ve found I’m always moving onto my next film. For me, it’s very important to ignore the wider dialogue about how the Australian industry is doomed – it’s negative and, as far as documentaries and TV series are concerned, it isn’t at all true. I think it’s far more important to put all your energy into your creativity and try not to be affected by this talk. There are so many subjects to be explored and we have the technology to do so – whether you know you’ve got financing or not.”

To find out more about Maverick Mother visit www.maverickmother.net Distribution enquiries can be made at http://www.marcom.com