78.34 DV 2023

FILMMAKER SARAH MILES
WAXWORKER MIKE WADE
PHOTOGRAPHER JOHN MILES
MD K E JUNG
MUSIC LAZARUS BLACK
SOUND MIX TIM BARKER

country of production UK

A METONYM OF HER

inspired by material shot during a studio visit to Mike Wade as he finished a waxwork of Marilyn Monroe for a Hollywood Museum leading to the memory of being given a book on Marilyn Monroe at twelve years old with an essay by Mark Harris entitled

One American Woman a Speculation on Disbelief.

During a visit to my childhood home in west dorset, my father a photographer suggests a visit with my DVcamera to Mike’s studio on the Jurassic coast as he finishes a wax work of Marilyn Monroe for a Hollywood Museum.

So we did. Mike was generous and hospitable with his time and space and himself.

A correspondence with KE Jung Korean Psychoanalyst whose book Childhood Trauma A Challenge Not Insanity has a chapter dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, leads to thoughts about the equivalence between the impact of trauma and Hollywood and Wax

Death mortality located in the body an inner integrity violated.

Back in London I began assembling the rushes of the material I had recorded over the weekend on a timeline: film of Mike and my father as they wander around his studio with bits of Marilyn. The Jurassic coast where I spent some of my childhood; the window of my preteen bedroom now home to my father’s Nabokov collection. , the roads, the sea, the cliffs, the rocks, the many car journeys and crashes.

Working from home my desk next to a window looking onto a street and railings in front of St Andrews gardens where people sit and play amongst the graves and remnant tombs. And the world passes by.

Given time recovering from the shocks of several suicides of an ex lover and a family member, an accidental overdose.. I began editing the material together.

Perhaps a homage to my grandmothers’ skills at embroidery, needlepoint, and pattern cutting.

Marilyn supported the poor the marginal like Ella Fitzgerald.

Being poor does it ever quite leave you

THE SUBLIME EDGE

the border between order and chaos something personal and experiential

On the threshold.

Continuing my investigation into cultural icons and their effect on identity and how this persists in fantasy and imagination.