Going Beyond Grieving, A Film Explores Living after Death
When Laguna Beach filmmaker, producer and writer Christine Fugate first read Donna Hilbert’s poem titled, “Grief Becomes Me,” the words instantly formed pictures in her mind.
Soon thereafter, these pictures formed the framework for a 2006 short film based on Hilbert’s poems. Co-produced with her husband, Jeff Jacobs, Fugate’s 2009 longer version, “Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story,” has been expanded to entail documentary footage, interviews with Hilbert and interpretations of her poetry. Film makers Kate Amend, Sandra Chandler and Midge Costin also collaborated with Fugate on the project.
The film will receive its Laguna Beach debut at the Woman’s Club on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m.
In poetry and film, Hilbert, 63, expresses her devastation over the death of her husband Larry, who was killed by a drunk driver while out for a bicycle ride. As marriages have their ups and downs, theirs had just segued from lower to high, something that made his untimely death even more tragic. “He’d always bring me coffee when he came back… that day when he was gone a long time and then the police came, I just knew,” she recalls on film.
Hilbert’s poetry can be jarringly short, as in “The Ring,” illustrating the matter-of-factness of children. “Josh in full directness of being four, says ‘Stop wearing that ring, you’re not married anymore’.” Or as in “The Dead,” where she wrote: “One night you come back fat. When I ask why you say, ‘The dead don’t exercise, but we do eat dinner’.”
Even so, they are numerous poems long enough to evidence keen observation and wit, and the ability to reach readers without bathos.
While “Grief” might bring to mind “Ghost” or glimpses of “Love Story,” similarities to these films are faint in all but their subjects, tormented by the loss of a beloved partner. By closing in on Hilbert, recalling her grief and gradual recovery on a beach so sundrenched as to appear otherworldly, Fugate’s film throws into relief the belief that even after death, hope exists on earth or elsewhere. This is bolstered by her husband’s appearance, more lifelike than ghostly, in scenes where he first comforts her and finally suggests that she move on and find a new love since he has as well.
While the film might be emotionally wrenching it is also a manifestation of resiliency, especially for those who might have suffered similar losses. When Hilbert says “that her heart was pulled apart like a wishbone,” a viewer gets it.
Hilbert, currently traveling in Europe and Israel, was unavailable for an interview.
Fugate, 45, felt an immediate kinship with the poet, whom she first met in 2004 at a reading at an author’s luncheon. She had recently lost her grandmother as well as two aunts and was still grieving. “I was very moved by Donna’s poetry and decided that I had to make it into a movie. Making and editing the film helped me work through my own grief,” said Fugate, whose first ex- perience with death involved the loss of her best friend at age 14.
Fugate, the daughter of a math professor father and a therapist mother grew up in Kentucky. However, the family also traveled extensively, living in England, Greece and Australia. “I grew up interested in people and have a passion for story telling,” she said. As an undergraduate student, she majored in medieval history and spent a year studying in Italy. She came to film making at graduate school, where she majored in Asian film and theater. Her master’s thesis was on contemporary female filmmakers in Thailand.
Today, she describes herself as someone who thinks in pictures, as a storyteller who has made it a mission to chronicle lives of women (“Southern Sex” and “Mother Love”) and of marginalized people such as Appalachian tobacco farmers (“Tobacco Blues”) and adult film stars (“The Girl Next- Door”).
A mother of two daughters, ages seven and eight, she also writes the Indy’s bi-weekly parenting column, Mothering Heights, and teaches film at Chapman University. Her advice to students: Figure out what story you want to tell and then mine all your creative resources. Tell your story in pictures.
