What is captured in In the Garden forms an impressionistic portrait of how I remember my grandmother, as she is still living, as she is still aging. This is what she looked like at age 86, mowing her front lawn in late August. This is what I see when I close my eyes and think of her; slicing okra to fry, humming a hymn while picking up sticks in the yard. All of it ordinary. All of it sacred.
The process of making this film was a collaboration between my grandmother, my mother, and myself. We stitched together our collective memories, translating fragments of our shared history into something visible and permanent. While this all began as an effort to immortalize my childhood memories, which are forever tied to my grandmother and the southern landscape, it soon became just as much a study on growing old, alone, in a place tethered to the past.
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Written / Directed / Edited / Produced by : Ivey Redding
DP: Noah Hanson
Sound / Score: Josh Warren
Color: Dylan Hageman
Titles: Connor Pettinelli
