Capturing a Short Life

From the Facebook group...

Capturing A Short Life is a beautifully photographed documentary film, that combines verité and interview footage with still photography, to detail the stories of four families who are dealing, in an immediate sense, with the loss of a newborn baby.

In a sensitive, intimate manner, this film explores the emotional, medical and ethical choices that parents are often faced with when they are told that their baby is incompatible with life.

Although this subject matter is impossibly sad, the lives and relationships that evolve, even in this context, are not.

This is not a film about death, it is, rather, a story about how critical it is to remember and celebrate the lives of these beautiful babies who are only with us for a moment, and how impossible it is to forget them.


The documentary is being screened at the Rhode Island International Film Festival on Wednesday August 6th at 5:00pm at the Columbus Theatre Arts Centre.

I imagine that the majority of people who will go to see this film will be people whose lives have been touched by this kind of loss, but it's still so great to see the "uncomfortable" subject of infant loss being taken out of the deep, dark shadows and explored openly and honestly.

If there's one thing I'd like to see in my lifetime, it's pregnancy and infant loss not being treated like an icky little secret that no one wants to acknowledge. It's too hard for grieving parents to carry the entire burden of remembrance.