Confinement: Motherhood & the Pandemic

Screening, workshop, panel discussion with performance duo Valentina Ceschi and Kate Lane with film director Vicki Thornton. Chaired by Dr Michiko Oki.

Confinement (2023) is a short film conceived by the artist and performance duo Valentina Ceschi and Kate Lane, written and directed by Vicki Thornton. It is set in the watery landscape of Walthamstow Wetlands, London. It presents a surreal, dystopian, alternate world of imagined maternal encounters, serving as a testament to the isolated experience of motherhood and birth during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.

Through a series of tableaux, fantastical costumed figures interact with one another in this abandoned urban wilderness, enacting a mysterious mythology through acts of ritual and service. The film explores narratives and ideas around confinement, restriction, grief, healing and hope. An original score by opera singer, songwriter and composer Helen Epega accompanies the film.

The short film is an ‘echo’ of a site-specific performance at the Wetlands in the summer of 2022, which developed through a series of community workshops with local mothers and carers.

As part of the Being Human Festival, this event at Shoreditch Town Hall included a screening of CONFINEMENT, an artist's Q&A panel, and a creative materials workshop.

• https://www.vickithornton.com/projects/c...
• https://www.bravenewworlds.co/confinemen...