BY JOE SCOTCHIE
jscotchie@antonmediagroup.com
An acclaimed movie, Look At Us Now, Mother! is coming to Roslyn this weekend. The movie will be shown from Friday, May 6 to Tuesday, May 10 at 7 p.m. at Bow Tie Cinemas in downtown Roslyn. Both the Saturday and Tuesday viewings will be followed by a Q &A with the filmmaker, Gayle Kirschenbaum.
Kirschenbaum is a native of the Five Towns area, even though she has family that lives in Roslyn. The movie, she told The Roslyn News, is about forgiveness, making it “the perfect Mother’s Day film.” The film is being publicized as “the brutal, honest and very funny truth of one mother/daughter relationship that pokes, bumps and clashes its way to understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness. See if you can’t find something to relate to in this unbelievably raw, revealing and beautiful piece that crosses cultures and generations.”
And that, Kirschenbaum said, is what has happened so far. “People saw it over and over again,” she said of the viewings that have taken place so far in New York, Los Angeles and at South Florida locations. “People think about their family,” when they watch it, she added. Kirschenbaum further adds that Look At Us Now, Mother! is a “therapeutic film, a self-help film.”
The movie is the latest triumph for the Long Island native who has enjoyed a long career as a television producer. Kirschenbaum has worked on shows for the Arts & Entertainment network, and for both the America’s Most Wanted and Little People’s series. Her previous film documentaries have included A Dog’s Life and My Nose about, as you might guess, a woman getting a nose job. After the latter documentary, Kirschenbaum received the prized profile in The Washington Post’s style section. She said that her mother’s reaction to that article inspired her latest film.
This film also has the feel of a documentary to it as it takes the moviegoer straight into the home life of the Kirschenbaum family. Or as the film’s press release states: “Look At Us Now, Mother! is comprised primarily of decades-worth of intimate family home movies and videos—from 8 mm film coverage of Gayle’s outwardly ‘Leave it to Beaver-esque’ childhood in an upwardly-mobile Long Island suburb, to personal family celebrations, fights, and even tragedies leading right up to the present. With raw courage and equal parts humor and pathos, Gayle invites the audience on her quest to understand, forgive and love her aging mother before it’s too late. As these two formidable women travel down the bumpy road of discovery, their relationship changes before our eyes and teaches us a universal lesson: the power of forgiveness.”
