A coming of Age story
A FORMER BLOGGER SHARES HER JOURNEY INTO A CLOISTERED RELIGIOUS oRDER wHOSE MEMBERS SEEK ANONYMITY AND OBSERVE MONASTIC SILENCE
Synopsis
Set within the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois, Chosen (Custody of the Eyes) forms an intimate portrait of Heather*, a former blogger and painter confronting what she believes is her calling: Becoming a cloistered contemplative nun in one of the strictest religious orders.
Chosen is a coming-of-age story by filmmaker Abbie Reese in collaboration with Heather, the film's primary subject and cinematographer. Heather’s novice mistress deemed this project—a video camera allowed into the enclosure to captured monastic life from the inside—a “once in a lifetime” occurrence.
* “Heather” selected this alias to reflect the Poor Clare Colettine pursuit of anonymity.
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The Aspirant – 2005
Motivated to understand the interior journey of a young woman joining a cloistered life that traces to the medieval era, Abbie arranged to meet "Heather" in 2005, when the 18-year-old was discerning a religious vocation.
The postulant – 2011
Granted unique and continued access, Abbie was allowed to make photographs and record video footage within the cloistered monastery, where no one other than the nuns are allowed. She conducted oral history interviews with Heather from 2005 through 2011, when the young entered the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford,
THE novice – 2012
Wanting to extend the collaboration and create a portrait from the perspective of the newly renamed “Sister Amata,” Abbie sought permission to lend a video camera, then worked closely with Sister Amata, who became the film's cinematographer. Chosen could not have happened without Sister Amata's proficiency as a visual artist. The project would not have happened without the trust developed since 2005 between Abbie, Sister Amata, and her community (the same community that is the focus of Abbie's book). This work could only have happened during Sister Amata's liminal phase—before she became completely immersed and committed to cloistered life. Once Sister Amata made vows, she no longer wanted to record footage of herself.
Director's notes
In my interdisciplinary relationship- and research-based artistic practice—a hybrid of experimental and documentary filmmaking with oral history and ethnographic methodologies—I focus on primary oral cultures and enclosed communities. I am interested in the liminal phase or transformation within a rite of passage; the construction of individual and cultural identity; and the performances of social roles.
From 2005 through 2017, I worked with a cloistered contemplative community of Poor Clare Colettine nuns in Rockford, Illinois. At the very beginning, I also arranged to meet a young woman considering joining the community. For six years, she hovered along a psychological edge, encountering the possibility that she had been chosen by God for a radical, countercultural life. In 2011, she entered the Corpus Christi Monastery.
In Chosen, “Heather,” has made an exodus from our world. She is the process of becoming “Sister Amata,” a member of a religious order founded in the Medieval Era. Just as the enclosure is an intermediary physical space, in which the nuns mediate between humanity and the divine, believing that their prayers and penances can change the course of history, Chosen shows Sister Amata inhabiting a threshold—a space between worlds. My collaborative practice was extended in Chosen to a “visual dialogue” in order to embed, materially and formally, the tensions and negotiations of a para-ethnographic documentary. I obtained permission to lend Sister Amata a video camera and acted as a director with this subject-collaborator cinematographer. Viewers are granted Sister Amata’s vantage point and access to her interior world as she journeys into a identity and culture.
In a sense, this film highlights the Female Hero’s Journey. One theme is universal—the parsing of one’s own destiny and agency. Cloistered nuns remove themselves from the world in order to mediate on behalf of humanity through penance and in prayer. The video camera also mediates, provoking and recording action with cinéma vérité, intimate confessionals, and direct cinema to yield contradictory and complicated public-private performances. The film, at points, mirrors Sister Amata’s own disorientation as she finds her footing in a liminal phase, as she attempts to assimilate into a heterotopia. The viewer might not apprehend immediately what Sister Amata witnesses and records; this reflects the very common experience of the nuns’ own confusion as they encounter and attempt to adapt to the self-built subculture.
Parts of this film might be challenging for viewers, as scenes extend beyond the duration that one might anticipate, requiring sustained attention or mindfulness, as mundane actions and moments unfold in real time. This deliberate choice is intended to enable viewers to experience, viscerally, the pace of monastic life, where members seek the divine in what is simple and ordinary.
~ Abbie Reese