feminist/visual/culture: A 30th anniversary celebration of women make movies

Halving the Bones

A film by Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury
1995
70 minutes
U.S.

Thomas 110
Saturday April 6
 In the "Double Bind: Mothers and Daughters" screenings starting at
 3:00 P.M.

Skeletons in the closet? Halving the Bones delivers a surprising twist to this tale. This cleverly-constructed film tells the story of Ruth, a half-Japanese filmmaker living in New York, who has inherited a can of bones that she keeps on a shelf in her closet. The bones are half of the remains of her dead Japanese grandmother, which she is supposed to deliver to her estranged mother. A narrative and visual web of family stories, home movies and documentary footage, Halving the Bones provides a spirited exploration of the meaning of family, history and memory, cultural identity and what itmeans to have been named after Babe Ruth!
  • Halving the Bones featured in a paper on "Women's Autobiographical Documentary and the Construction of Identity," by Laura Vazquez at the Visible Evidence Conference"
  • Ozeki's "The Shifty Eye" in the "Dissolves and Jump Cuts: Representations of Race in Contemporary Film and Video" session of College Art Association
  • Indies in the air! Northwest Airlines offers Halving the Bones inflight
  • POV essay by Ozeki in Bitch on "objectivity, documentary, and manipulation"

“**** Editor’s Choice. One of my top one or two faves. Ozeki is both a terrific storyteller and a sly visual trickster; she seems to delight in keeping us off-guard, awake and thinking. Highly recommended for public and academic library collections,” Gary Handman, Video Librarian

“A lyrical and sharply-observed film,”Barbara Abrash, NYU

Ruth L. Ozeki's book, My Year of Meats, Penguin, is a critical success and a great read!
Center for Visual Culture
 Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr,PA
19010-2899