Anti-oppressive approach to film making and creative process
I’d like to share with you some practices that I have been co-creating in the spaces between narrative therapy and film. These invitational practices have emerged through my experience of responding to trauma and displacement in many contexts including family and domestic violence, state sanctioned violence and forced migration and working on a hybrid documentary film, Island of the Hungry Ghosts; accompanying people in their film and creative processes and co-designing relevant and expansive questions and exercises to support the many facets of creative and collaborative processes.
Questions are my craft and my passion - I deeply enjoy the practice of shaping questions that are response based, deconstructive, invitational, political and relational with the intention to accompany people in the many endeavours to articulate and share experience. I witness the profound effects daily of what happens when someone has articulated an experience in ways that they haven’t before and the momentum that emerges from this and pours into the medium(s) they choose.
By stepping into a number of different positions in the film, Island of the Hungry Ghosts, my practice was significantly shaped. On one hand, I was engaged by the director, Gabrielle Brady, as a narrative therapy consultant to specifically accompany her in the creative process and in navigating the political landscape as a young, first time, female film maker, determined to make a film that was refusing to be what was expected of in an Australian context. For example, through offering an exercise where I interviewed Gabrielle as the Island, human-protagonist-dominance was resisted and the Island was invited in as a meaningful participant of the project.
I also participated in the film alongside people seeking asylum in my ‘real life role’ as a trauma therapist and together we designed a way of filming the therapeutic sessions that both continued the possibilities of therapy as well as being actively discerning and choosing participants in the multiple stories unfolding in the film.
Through the process of the film I came to understand more clearly how my particular location of privilege as therapist was in operation and in response to this Gabrielle and I also took up a director - non-actor relationship where I shared parts of my (and my family’s) life outside of my professional role as a therapist - stretching me personally to find ways to articulate experience that wasn’t coated in learned (therapeutic) language. Through Gabrielle’s designed exercises I had the opportunity to come into relationship with different parts of my voice that enabled me to also speak on my own terms and in my own words. Gabrielle and I continue to collaborate to this day on film, workshop and writing projects.
I want to be part of practices that honour and make visible the ethics and intentionality of process in relation to image-and community-making.
I come to the practice by developing consultation and workshop spaces responding to the experiences of film making process drawing from my knowledge of post-structuralist therapy (narrative and sandplay) in order to support artists and film makers in articulating their visions, engaging with the things that get in the way of relationships with creative process, exploring what artistic stretch/risk might look like in the person’s context and growing creative practices in non extractive ways.
What I offer in workshops is an opportunity for film makers at all points along their journey to explore their projects in a way that both accompanies and counterbalances the more well known industry aspects such as pitching, script development and technical skills. This compliments and provides a holistic development context for emerging and established film makers as I offer a cross pollination of narrative therapy, centering body knowledge and collaboration, socio-political engagement and creative deconstruction.
I both develop workshops according to themes that are relevant to film makers and artists or according to the needs and interests of mentoring/development programs, film collectives, film schools and film festivals. I have been designing and facilitating variations on different topics and workshop lengths (and individual sessions) to people at specific points in their journey with film since 2015.
For example, recently I designed and shared a workshop on Departures with staff and fellows in DocX Archive Lab. By bringing a multi-storied collection of questions we found together the space to attend to the multiplicity of departing - loss, reconnecting with what we hold precious, articulating what we might be saying no to in departures, bringing the idea of departures into relationship with agency and many other rich, nuanced realms of experience with implications for timescapes across past, present and future. Participants of this workshop spoke about how this offered an intentional relational space and ritual that offered safe passage in finishing the fellowship but continuing treasured relationships.
To see more previous workshops
In recent individual consultations some ideas explored include:
including the experience of the body during process of filming/preparing for shooting
For further information or to request a consultation or workshop
Or join me on Patreon were I offer short and longer exercises, exclusive fragments of conversations and videos zooming in on different aspects of practice. All of this content is designed to support your own relationships with practice whether they be therapeutic, personal, creative, educational, informal, alone, collective, project based or day-to-day.
Alongside monthly new offerings there are currently 20+ pieces of content such as…
Encountering edges exercise
Our Multi-storied bodies: How value is assigned exercise
Making space for less well known practices exercise
Unease and discomfort in relation to practice exercise
A short reflection on conversations to writing and questions I ask myself
An exercise with voices that are disruptive and loud
Departures (including little fragments of migration of identity/rites of passage)
Behind the scenes: Sandplay and Research with Dr Tarryn Phillips
Questions are my craft and my passion - I deeply enjoy the practice of shaping questions that are response based, deconstructive, invitational, political and relational with the intention to accompany people in the many endeavours to articulate and share experience. I witness the profound effects daily of what happens when someone has articulated an experience in ways that they haven’t before and the momentum that emerges from this and pours into the medium(s) they choose.
By stepping into a number of different positions in the film, Island of the Hungry Ghosts, my practice was significantly shaped. On one hand, I was engaged by the director, Gabrielle Brady, as a narrative therapy consultant to specifically accompany her in the creative process and in navigating the political landscape as a young, first time, female film maker, determined to make a film that was refusing to be what was expected of in an Australian context. For example, through offering an exercise where I interviewed Gabrielle as the Island, human-protagonist-dominance was resisted and the Island was invited in as a meaningful participant of the project.
I also participated in the film alongside people seeking asylum in my ‘real life role’ as a trauma therapist and together we designed a way of filming the therapeutic sessions that both continued the possibilities of therapy as well as being actively discerning and choosing participants in the multiple stories unfolding in the film.
Through the process of the film I came to understand more clearly how my particular location of privilege as therapist was in operation and in response to this Gabrielle and I also took up a director - non-actor relationship where I shared parts of my (and my family’s) life outside of my professional role as a therapist - stretching me personally to find ways to articulate experience that wasn’t coated in learned (therapeutic) language. Through Gabrielle’s designed exercises I had the opportunity to come into relationship with different parts of my voice that enabled me to also speak on my own terms and in my own words. Gabrielle and I continue to collaborate to this day on film, workshop and writing projects.
I want to be part of practices that honour and make visible the ethics and intentionality of process in relation to image-and community-making.
I come to the practice by developing consultation and workshop spaces responding to the experiences of film making process drawing from my knowledge of post-structuralist therapy (narrative and sandplay) in order to support artists and film makers in articulating their visions, engaging with the things that get in the way of relationships with creative process, exploring what artistic stretch/risk might look like in the person’s context and growing creative practices in non extractive ways.
What I offer in workshops is an opportunity for film makers at all points along their journey to explore their projects in a way that both accompanies and counterbalances the more well known industry aspects such as pitching, script development and technical skills. This compliments and provides a holistic development context for emerging and established film makers as I offer a cross pollination of narrative therapy, centering body knowledge and collaboration, socio-political engagement and creative deconstruction.
I both develop workshops according to themes that are relevant to film makers and artists or according to the needs and interests of mentoring/development programs, film collectives, film schools and film festivals. I have been designing and facilitating variations on different topics and workshop lengths (and individual sessions) to people at specific points in their journey with film since 2015.
For example, recently I designed and shared a workshop on Departures with staff and fellows in DocX Archive Lab. By bringing a multi-storied collection of questions we found together the space to attend to the multiplicity of departing - loss, reconnecting with what we hold precious, articulating what we might be saying no to in departures, bringing the idea of departures into relationship with agency and many other rich, nuanced realms of experience with implications for timescapes across past, present and future. Participants of this workshop spoke about how this offered an intentional relational space and ritual that offered safe passage in finishing the fellowship but continuing treasured relationships.
To see more previous workshops
In recent individual consultations some ideas explored include:
including the experience of the body during process of filming/preparing for shooting
- Attending to our body as an active member of a film process and to include body knowledge and experience in preparing for filming - through a conversational practice I’ve developed called ‘Our multi-storied body’
- Attending to the more-than-technical aspects between a director and a cinematographer - preferred rhythms and relationship with time/pace, responding to difference and/or potential conflict, approach to labour, naming ideas or discourses that might have a lot to say about the upcoming filming process and considering together what position they might like to take in response to these ideas/discourses
- In this specific example we explored how the idea of a formal casting process was disrupting the film maker's preferred approach with coming into relationship with non-actors. In this conversation we designed a process that was in resistance to traditional casting practices according to what this film maker valued and was committed to (relational ethics)
- Moving from competitive and hierarchical demands to hold space for multiple projects and shape rituals and practices for the transitions between each film
- Moving from accepting to be in a film to actively shaping the parameters of one’s own participation
For further information or to request a consultation or workshop
Or join me on Patreon were I offer short and longer exercises, exclusive fragments of conversations and videos zooming in on different aspects of practice. All of this content is designed to support your own relationships with practice whether they be therapeutic, personal, creative, educational, informal, alone, collective, project based or day-to-day.
Alongside monthly new offerings there are currently 20+ pieces of content such as…
Encountering edges exercise
Our Multi-storied bodies: How value is assigned exercise
Making space for less well known practices exercise
Unease and discomfort in relation to practice exercise
A short reflection on conversations to writing and questions I ask myself
An exercise with voices that are disruptive and loud
Departures (including little fragments of migration of identity/rites of passage)
Behind the scenes: Sandplay and Research with Dr Tarryn Phillips
Current Projects
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Gabrielle Brady
Set amongst the lush hyper colour tropics of north Queensland Australia, Nina is an ecologist who runs a successful environmental consultancy firm. Her ordered life is interrupted when she unexplainably starts wandering in her sleep at night to the nearby rainforest. THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD is a metaphysical ghost story that explores the uncanny sensation of guilt, denial and complicity. |
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Wet Togetherness
Xiaolu Wang
The spirit of a drowned child leads Xiaolu on a pilgrimage to dismantle the fear of water. By visiting with humans and marine mammals who are exploring interdependence and collective organizing, new paradigms of engaging with the water and each other, emerge. |
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The Treasury of Human Inheritance
Alexis Kyle Mitchell
'...an experimental auto-ethnography about living inside family, tradition, genetics and disease.' |
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Phantasy, Psychoanalysis and Ph(f)ictions
Phantasy, Psychoanalysis and Ph(f)ictions invites 4 artists, Allie J Carr, Jade Montserrat, Samantha Sweeting and Michelle Williams Gamaker to work using the Lacanian model of the Cartel: a small, focused working group which invites expert mentors to join them in co-researching. Supported by the Arts Council England's Develop Your Creative Practice bursary, this year-long research group will meet four times to forge an artistic alliance with individuals working creatively within the fields of Phantasy, Psychoanalysis and Ph (f)iction. The aim is to produce an artistic publication and to build a network between artists and individuals working with psychoanalysts.
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The Mask that Grins and Lies
Martine Granby
A meditative documentary feature unveiling a triptych portrait of intergenerational silence and the stigma shrouding Black women's mental health. |
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A Place To Stand (working title)
Tess Hutson
A deeply personal journey investigating how violence manifests in relationships, families, and communities, by seeking to uncover the secrets surrounding a horrific tragedy. |
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The wolves always come at night
Gabrielle Brady
A feature hybrid film alongside a Mongolian nomadic family tracing their displacement from their homeland to the ger districts of the city. |
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Toward Reckoning (working title)
Imogen Butler-Cole
Toward Reckoning is a memoir about healing after sexual trauma and an exploration of the monolith of sexual harm. It asks questions such as: how is it possible to heal in a world that doesn’t feel safe? What does it take to encounter and accept ourselves, wholly and at the deepest level? And what positives, if any, can we take from our experiences? The book follows Imogen on her path from denial to recognition, through complex processes of relearning to eventual ongoing healing, all while charting how the effects of her sexual assaults played out through relentless exhaustion, internalised shame and a deep mistrust in others. |
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Nightdrifters
Florian Kunert
Hybrid feature film in development. |
Completed Projects
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Freedom Swimmer
This is the story of a grandfather’s perilous swim from China to Hong Kong that parallels his granddaughter’s own quest for a new freedom.
Winner of the academy accredited Yoram Gross award at the Sydney Film festival and screened and many festivals including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Slamdance, Stuttgart Animation Festival and Aspen Shortsfest. |
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Get to the Wire
'...in the year 2032, Judy, an environmental refugee from Australia, is being detained in a British detention centre while isolated from her family...'
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"The absence of the witch does not invalidate the spell"
"...By positioning photos taken through my laptop, alongside existing portraits taken in person; this collection
attempts to visually depict the difference in contact we are experiencing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic...the title, taken from Emily Dickenson’s poem “1383” about friendship and endurance, encapsulates my thoughts on how we still care for and love one another, even though we cannot be physically present in each other’s lives..." |
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Belongings: A photographic exploration of Surti family heirlooms
"...a collection of stories told through family heirlooms in Surat, India...the participants spoke about keeping their heirlooms to evoke memory, preserve a story, or represent a precious moment in time...each object, significant in its own right, reveals the participants’ connection to their ancestors, and suggests a subtle connection between the present and the past..."
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Solange sie noch arme haben
As long as you still have arms "The 1980s of the GDR - the group around the puppeteer Frank is arrested for distributing pacifist pamphlets...Different truths and memories stand side by side. The focus is on a person who tries to never act out of a position of victim and shows his personal approach to the dictatorship of the GDR." Hofer-filmtage trailer |
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Fortschritt im Tal der Ahnungslosen
Progress in the Valley of the People Who Don't Know "One of the most original, funny and at the same time melancholic films of the Berlinale 2019" Andrea D’Addio - Goethe Institut |
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Foreign Body
“A truthful tender story of reclaiming the body after abuse. A beautiful and brave piece.... strikingly simple…. one of the most truthful explorations of the subject…. restrained direction... a stunning soundtrack… this show will only continue to grow and charge people with the courage to speak out.” Hiive |
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Island of the Hungry Ghosts
“The best documentary award goes to a film that demonstrates extraordinary mastery of the full symphonic range of cinematic tools: cinematography, editing, score, sound design and, perhaps greatest of all, an exquisite use of metaphor. To a film that moved us deeply, impressed us immensely and made us feel we were witnessing nothing less than the emergence, fully formed, of a major new cinematic talent." Tribeca Jury, 2018 |
What filmmakers/creatives/educators say...
"...(Poh) is one of the most extraordinary guides in my creative and inner work. She helped me overcome some major hurdles with Foreign Body, encouraging my vision for it and enabling me to take it to a wider audience than I'd dared to imagine ...” Imogen Butler Cole, Theatre maker, business trainer, public speaker and activist www.imogenbutler-cole.co.uk/
"At the end of the project Poh Lin carried out a long interview about the process of making the film which helped to connect the dots and reflect the events of a three year working process. It not only built the foundation for writing the synopsis and director's statement, but also helped me to arrive at a deeper understanding of the decisions and learnings I made along the way and how they are both part of my own biography and wider socio-cultural and historical context." Florian Kunert, filmmaker www.floriankunert.com
'”...These sessions with Poh Lin help to open up a powerful and supportive space for navigating and grounding one's practice, methods and intentions, and explores how these elements may sit in relation to your personal and professional narratives…” Brigitte Hart, sound artist & vocalist www.brigittehart.com
"...Poh Lin's contribution to the project was invaluable. At a point where the creative process had derailed we identified the emotional disconnect causing the problem and explored the options to get the documentary back on track. She immediately understood the heart of the film - the story we were trying to tell - and helped to arrive at some very practical suggestions to move forward..." Eddie Narain, filmmaker
"I worked with Poh Lin while experiencing a creative block in my culinary work. I was very unsure about how her approach could help me but I was taken aback by the whole process...her questions and angles drew from me what was always there but had been squashed by months of business pressure and self doubt...it not only shifted this specific block but also brought to light some internal ideas I was holding around my own capabilities that, once recognised I was able to step away from and move forward with confidence. An incredibly positive outcome." Jade, chocolatier and business owner wawachocolatier.com
"I had already had the premiere of the film and it had been showing at festivals for some months, so I felt it had come around a full circle in terms of the process of making the film. But then I engaged with Poh Lin for a full day session and realised I hadn’t finished the project at all! This one day immersive session with Poh Lin allowed me to look at the film in a completely unexpected way that was not connected to industry standards, but rather my very own personal experience. Poh Lin used a series of exercises that used metaphors, rituals, visualisations and unique questioning so that I was able to reconnect to the journey I had in making the film. From this I was clearly able to see how I had grown as a director during the process, but also to see what difficult parts of the process I was ready to shed so that I may begin embarking on my next film idea. Seeing the film through symbolism and visualisation I was able to experience the core beauty of what I had been able to create in collaboration with others. It helped me immensely to move away from the self critic that had been preventing me from connecting to my imagination so that I could be so much more free and loose and ready to explore the early ideas of my next film, without stopping myself every second thought!" Gabrielle, filmmaker www.gabrielle-brady.com