I Once Met A Person Who Drew Dinosaurs
- Home video
Synopsis
"As with childbirth, chronic depression can only be experienced, not explained”, Dante’s description of the "dark wood" grazes it. "It is so bitter death is scarcely more.”, the director Jeffrey Ruoff once depicted his experience.
This film is both a gaze at the filmmaker’s husband, who is a painter, and an inquiry into him. The gaze consists not only of love and intimacy but also of bipolar illness and death. The painter passed away unexpectedly, and all the filmmaker can do is bring back the life of a dinosaur created by him. The dinosaur is revived and continues the painter’s life. It becomes the character that the filmmaker employs in her love story and also in her imagination of a bipolar disorder sufferer—a horrible monster that is not accepted by society. The film is also a conversation between two artists. They are lovers, husband and wife, life partners, and creative collaborators. They create a film about life that alters their perspectives along the way. The film's narration uses a non-traditional documentary vocabulary. It's a hybrid film that combines diaries, private home videos, and performances. It depicts the darkness and light in their lives through the eyes of a female director. It's also a package sent into the future, waiting for the day their daughter opens it.
Director Statement
My closest lover and life partner is the story's protagonist. Even though we live so close together, I still can't really understand all of him. When I picked up the camera to film him, his disease became something I couldn't look at directly and couldn't avoid. When I concentrate on bipolar disorder and try to find metaphors in it, it becomes an eternal mystery to me. I finally realize that all I can do is describe it and approach it, even if I may never touch it. People with bipolar disorder or depression are all around us, and there may be more than we realize because this is a "unspeakable" and "don't know what to say" disease. It also carries many negative labels; this is a restricted area that ordinary people find difficult to approach. This film opens a window into bipolar disorder, allowing ordinary people to approach and leave with no psychological burden. For me, this film is a memorial to our family, so that our daughter can see how brilliantly and bravely her father lived.
Team
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