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This is history from below at its very best. It tells its tale with heart and passion and captures the granular texture of day to day life and moment by moment danger. There is not only stunning cinematography throughout but also a mother’s efforts to remember and a daughter’s need to know. “Red Boat Crossing” is a superb testimonial to dedication, memory, love, and the importance of the past in understanding our present. Bill Nichols, Film Critic & Author
Synopsis
Sixty-five years after the Allied invasion of Southern France, the director’s mother, Cecily Barker Finley, tries to recall her involvement as a social worker aboard a WWII Red Cross ship called the Château Thierry. These memories are recorded in letters and phone calls with her daughter who is living on the coast of France where the invasion occurred. After her mother dies, the daughter discovers a trunk buried under old rugs in the back of the family garage. Unopened since the 1940s, the trunk is filled with her mother’s Red Cross memorabilia. By carefully documenting the trunk’s contents, missing pieces of the invasion story begin to come into focus. Yet, despite a mountain of facts and photographs, mysteries persist about family, war, and what it means to be a hero.
The Red Boat combines spoken and written recollections of Cecily Barker Finley’s experience taking care of the wounded, with The Historical Record of the invasion of Southern France as written by the captain of the Red Cross ship, The Chateau Thierry. She tends to the emotional need of the soldiers, while filling in on nursing duties for which she is not trained. At one point she receives leave to fly to the front line where her brother is severely wounded. Throughout the film Mrs. Finley’s frustration with her inability to recall all the facts and details, infuses the daughter’s own memories with the impact WWII had on her life. Contemporary footage shot at the invasion’s location is layered with archival footage from the Red Cross and Cecily Barker’s personal artifacts discovered in the trunk. A small house at the invasion site that the mother looked at while aboard the Red Cross ship, and from which the daughter looked towards the sea 65 years later, situate the two visual experiences. Together these materials explore the mystery of one woman’s experience of international combat during WWII.
Director’s Statement
During a residency at the Camargo Foundation on the coast of Southern France, I was looking out my studio window and was struck with the realization that 65 years earlier my mother had been aboard a Red Cross Ship at that very location. We began corresponding about her experience during the Allied invasion of Southern France and her work as a social worker taking care of the wounded. I also recorded her memories over Skype. Because she was in her 90’s I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to hear her stories in her own voice.
There was a small red sailboat anchored beyond my window that I filmed every day as it endured dramatic storms, punishing surf, and sunny calm days. Throughout my five months at the Camargo Foundation, I stared through the camera at the red boat trying to imagine my mother’s experience during WWII.
At the end of my residency, I created a site-specific installation on the interior window and exterior wall of the Napoleon Room at the Camargo Foundation, (named because of the night Napoleon spent there). This 9-minute looped installation included snippets of my mother’s recording, and bits of our written correspondence that floated across the wall of the building. The images projected on the exterior wall referenced my mother’s view from the ship to shore. And the images projected on the window referenced my experience of the location 65 years later.
My mother died 13 years later at the age of 101. When cleaning out the house I grew up in, I discovered a trunk that hadn’t been opened since the 1940’s buried under a massive pile of rugs at the back of the garage. It contained a trove of my mother’s Red Cross memorabilia. As I documented the trunks contents and corresponded with the Red Cross about donating the materials to their archive, an idea for a film emerged. I combined footage from the original installation with archival material found in the trunk and from the Red Cross documentation during WWII. Quotes from the Historical Record of the Chateau Thierry Hospital ship my mother served on written by the ship’s captain, are combined with my mother’s original recollections. Photographs, letters, and documents from my mother’s service 65 years ago are interwoven with footage I shot of the location when I lived there. Together, all this material offers an account of one woman’s experience in international combat during WWII.