On March 6, Albuquerque’s Guild Cinema hosted two screenings of filmmaker Kyle Henry’s new documentary “Time Passages.” A Q&A session with Henry was held after each screening.
“Time Passages” is a portrait of the filmmaker coming to terms with his mother’s dementia, which forces him to reflect on his childhood, his relationship with his mother and his perception of his family members’ lives.
The film was made in the context of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Henry could not visit his mother due to her memory care facility being on strict lockdown.
“Time Passages” explores themes of identity, family and time, utilizing Henry’s family archive and intimate documentation of his own experiences. It dives into the fragility of memories and how people interpret them. For example, the documentary features damaged recordings of his mother singing and videos of his childhood.
He even explores the influence of the film production company Kodak on his family archives, wondering how much it has affected his memory and perception of the past.
“When you're trying to make a work about memory — how do you do that? How many photographs can you show? Especially when they’re memories that you don’t have documentation of,” Henry said.
Henry used symbolic representations of his family throughout the film, such as dolls and a dollhouse to reconstruct critical moments.
“The animation with the little dolls really became a way to visualize something that you can’t visualize,” Henry said.
“Time Passages” is unconventional for a documentary. Henry bounces through different mediums, including home movies, interviews with his parents, recordings of FaceTimes with his mother during the pandemic and symbolic expressions of his own emotions.
In one scene, Henry tosses dozens of family photos and keepsakes into the air, looking up as they fall around him in slow motion. Viewers can see the simultaneous awe and fear across Henry’s face as he is forced to confront generations of memories and the loss of countless memories with his mother’s dementia. In this sense, “Time Passages” is closer to a video memoir than a documentary.
Multiple scenes feature Henry playing both himself and his mother, acting out a hypothetical conversation.
During the Q&A, Henry revealed that this is known as the empty chair technique, which derives from Gestalt therapy.
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The practice focuses on having a chance to talk to someone who is not there. You sit in a chair and talk to them, and then sit in the other chair and answer “not as you hope they would answer you, but as you think they would answer you,” Henry said.
The segment was the last thing shot for the documentary, which Henry said was recorded in a three hour improv session with his husband.
The improvised conversation drew from Henry’s relationship with his mother and required that he put himself in her place to talk to her one last time. These scenes are part of the film’s exploration of guilt and closure.
In the film, Henry discusses coming to terms with his identity as a gay man in the South and what it was like to come out to his parents. Through a series of photos and videos documenting his young adulthood, Henry offers a glimpse into what it was like to be Queer in the 1990s. His coming out process was fraught, thanks in large part to his Southern upbringing.
“My parents had so much value from children that in 1991 when I came out, the idea that a gay man could have children and be a parent was inconceivable to them,” Henry said.
However, he said that his parents soon accepted him for who he was.
“It didn’t end our relationship, it created some other kind of level of our relationship,” Henry said.
During the Q&A, Henry urged the audience to conduct their own interviews with older family members, recording the stories of their lives.
“If you have anyone in your life who you love and you want to remember some kind of stories, don’t think you can get around to it tomorrow because you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” Henry said.
Emmett Di Mauro is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
Elijah Ritch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. They can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
