Love and Diane Essay

Synopsis make love & Diane tells the grand story of a family over three generations. At its heart lies the highly aerated relationship betwixt a mother and daughter, desperate for love and forgiveness but caught in a devastating cycle. For cognize, the beingness changed forever when she and her siblings were torn from their mother, Diane. Separated from her family and thrust into a terrifying world of institutions and foster homes, the memory of that trice is more(prenominal) vivid to her than her present life. Ten years fuddle passed since that day and Love and her five siblings have been reunited with their mother.But all have been changed by the years of separation. They are al well-nigh strangers to each other and Love is tormented by the thought that it was her fault. At 8 years old she was the one who revealed to a instructor that her mother was an drug junky. Now she is 18 and HIV+. And she has just given birth to a son, Donyaeh. For Love & Diane this baby represents everything good and hopeful for the future. But that hope is mixed with fear. Donyaeh has been born with the HIV virus and months must pass before his final status is kn consume.As Diane struggles to make her family whole again and to realize round of her own dreams, Love seems to be drifting hike and further away from her child. Diane, torn by her own guilt over her childrens fate when she was an addict, tries to help and to care for her grandson. But when Diane confides her fears for her daughter to a therapist, the legal philosophy suddenly appear at the door. Donyaeh is taken from Loves arms and it seems to the family as if history has repeated itself. Now Love must face the same or screw her mother had faced years before.She is charged with neglect and must prove to a world of social workers, therapists and prosecutors that she is a fit mother. And Diane must rally the courage to turn away from her guilt and grasp a chance to pursue her long-deferred dreams. While the ing est takes us deep into the life of a single family, it in addition offers a provocative look at the Byzantine system that aims to help but as often frustrates the familys attempts to improve their situation. The film differs from umpteen documentaries that deal with the problems facing poor communities in that it eschews talking eads and interviews with experts and aims instead to immerse the viewer in the experiences and thoughts of a family trying to survive and retain autonomy in the face of terrible challenges. Love Diane Inner-City Blues An converse with Jennifer Dworkin For over eight years Jennifer Dworkin documented the personal struggles of a recovering crack addict and her churning daughter in Love Diane. Fellow long-term filmmaker Steve crowd talks with Dworkin about her epic poem work of American vrit film qualification.I first heard about Jennifer Dworkins Love & Diane when it play at the 2002 New York Film Festival. Though I missed seeing it because I live in C hicago, the word was that this was a special film, one in which the filmmaker spent years intimately pursual the lives of a family. Since thats been my own filmmaking M. O. , I knew this was a documentary I had to see. So in November, when I finally did settle into my seat at Amsterdams International Documentary Festival to receive the film, I had pretty high expectations. Love & Diane lived up to them and more.Its a powerful, uncompromising, yet compassionate personation of a mother and daughter coping with a hard life in Brooklyn and an even more difficult personal history between them. In the best sense of the word, the film is a relapsing to the heyday of cinema vrit filmmaking in the 60s and early 70s, When the Maysles were in their prime and young filmmakers like Barbara Kopple were making their mark. Love Diane is one of those films where the filmmaker earned such(prenominal) intimate access and the trust of her subjects that it gives viewers a rare and complex glimpse i nto the lives of people we rarely really see in films.And like most great film subjects, Diane Hazzard and her daughter, Love, continually confound our expectations of what it means to be a ghetto mom or an ex-crack addict or a black teenage mother. Meeting and getting to know the director, Jennifer Dworkin, was one of the pleasures of the Amsterdam festival. My film, Stevie, also played there, and Jennifer and I found unexpected common ground in the stories each of our films tells. Both films deal with troubled family history, struggles between a parent and child, foster care, poverty and the social service and legal systems.Yet, in other ways, Stevie and Love Diane, couldnt be more different. Filmmaker gave me a chance to talk further with Jennifer about her impressive first film and compare notes about how we each went about making such demanding and challenging films. Steve James How long did you spend on this film? Jennifer Dworkin You know, I never answer that question. Jame s Really? Dworkin No, just kidding laughs. If you count directions I started but didnt end up using in the film, about eight years, including editing. But not full time. James Of course not. How could one survive? Dworkin Exactly.