Coat Hangers-The Making of Leona's Sister

 

The Making of Leona’s Sister Gerri

In talking about what threatens legalized abortion today, Jane Gillooly went beyond the pro-life movement into the cost of abortion and health care. Like many women who know or remember about life before Roe v. Wade, she is surprised the same fight continues 44 years later

 

 Each time I watched the DVD, Leona’s Sister Gerri, I cried at the waste.

Gerri wasn’t the only one suffering waste caused by not having safe abortion services available. Her daughters, brothers, sisters, parents and friend were also deprived of Gerri’s warmth and love.

I wondered not just about the woman who had the abortion but about the woman, Jane Gillooly, who made a film about this particular abortion. What motivated her to tell the story of this unnecessary death?

As a journalist, I know it is possible to slant any story by selecting the facts to be printed. The same with documentaries. An ethical journalist, an ethical documentary maker, will be sure to tell the in-depth story without inserting their own prejudice.

Another filmmaker might have taken the point of view that Gerri was wrong to marry a man she barely knew, wrong to stay with him, wrong to have an affair.

Very few people go through life without making bad choices. Gillooly does not gloss over or overly dramatize Gerri’s bad choices. She made mistakes—a fact. She needed to correct her mistakes.

Gerri believed her pregnancy carried a greater risk of death from her abusive husband, from whom she was separated, than death by abortion.

Death is a high price for a mistake. She would not be the first or last woman to seek happiness and believe the promises of a lover for a better life, only to have it evaporate.

On one viewing, I tried watching the film, not only from the perspective of the information, but from how the story was told.

Finding the Filmmaker

Happy endings cannot be created when an early and unnecessary death is the story.  wondered aboutthefilmmakerJane

•      What made her select this as a subject?
•      How did she make some of the editing decisions?
•      What were her personal feelings about abortion?

Since the film had been made in 1995, I wasn’t sure I could locate her. Thanks to social media, it was easier than I imagined.

Her website contained more information, including other films she has made and international recognition of her work in Canada, Mexico and Russia as well as playing in prestigious places such as the Lincoln Center, the Sundance Film Festival and on Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television. She teaches at the Museum of Fine Arts School, Tufts University, Boston/Medford, Massachusetts.

I emailed Gillooly. She responded that she would be happy to do an interview. Between our travel schedules it took a couple of weeks to arrange.

She was an easy interviewee.

I was amazed to learn that Leona’s Sister Gerri was her first film because it appeared to be so professional. Prior to filming she’d been an artist working with images and text.

She had seen the photo of Gerri’s corpse in the motel room, she said, in Our Bodies Ourselves, a feminist classic book about women’s health and sexuality researched and written by a non-profit group in Boston. Used by women all over the world, the book is translated into 29 languages and has sold more than four million copies. It is considered one of the best texts on feminine health care for the non-medical world. The latest edition was issued in 2011. www.ourbodiesourselves.org but their website contains everything the book does and more.

She used the word “horrific” to describe the photo. I don’t see how anyone can look at the photo and not get the same reaction. As awful as the photo was, the details of the person who died were unknown.

She was “stunned” to learn that the mother of her friend, Toni Elka, was Gerri’s sister,

Leona.

Gillooly wanted Gerri’s story told. She approached Leona, but the woman wasn’t ready to talk 

talk publicly. Rather than pressure her, Gillooly said if she changed her mind, please call her. A couple of years later she received the call she was sure would never come.

Jane had never made a film, but she also knew you don’t delay when an opportunity comes up. Although she didn’t have a camera, she bought one, which cost around $2,000, a lot of money for her.

Later she would get a National Endowments for the Art (NEA) grant and financial help from PBS to help defray editing costs.

“Gerri didn’t die of an abortion. I mean technically she did, but she died because she was pregnant by a married man, she was afraid of her estranged husband, she was ashamed and couldn’t speak to anyone about it. She wasn’t intending on having an abortion; it was illegal, birth control was still illegal, and the moral code that everyone was living under forced her to silence,” Gillooly said.

It was not enough to just have Leona speaking. One of Gerri’s brothers, John Twedy, agreed to talk on camera. One of the police detectives, now a lawyer, was willing, another was not, but the detective willing to talk gave the needed depth.

The chambermaid was willing to tell how she found Gerri’s body, but didn’t want her name used, although she was happy to be visible on camera. Jane agreed to not identify her.

The film has been distributed in classrooms and libraries. It was premiered on PBS 1 June 1995. It is available through the Internet (http://abortionfilms.org/en/show/3468/leonas-schwester-gerri/).

In talking about what threatens legalized abortion today, Gillooly went beyond the pro-life movement into the cost of abortion and health care. Like many women who know or remember about life before Roe v. Wade, she is surprised the same fight continues 44 years later.

“Every single woman in the film with one exception—everyone had an abortion, and everyone wanted to tell me about it,” Gillooly said. That included Gerri’s daughter, Judy, who was 15 when she had an abortion. Judy is pro-life and feels she may have to answer for her own abortion, but she does not want to make the decision whether to abort or not for anyone else.

Gillooly also denies that abortion is only a woman’s issue. She says it is a man’s issue too.

And in the film, it is obvious the effect the film has had on all of Gerri’s family and friends.

She has made other films since Leona’s Sister Gerri, all of which she thinks show the human condition, she hopes with a sense of authenticity. Her other work includes:

        Audience of Love and Shame (2015) 70 mins. An unattended camera observes an audience watching her film, Suitcase of Love and Shame.

        Suitcase of Love and Shame (2013) 70 min. This 1960s Midwestern love story is reconstructed from 60 hours of audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay.

        Today the Hawk Takes One Chick (2008) 72 mins. In the Lubombo region of Swaziland, three grandmothers become instrumental in defining a new world order dictated by HIV/AIDS.

        Splendor (2005) 2 mins. It illuminates the richness of friendship, the importance of self-determination, and the capacity for growth, even as dementia and death approach.

        Dragonfiles: The Baby Cries (2000) 10 mins. Verging in tone from the coy to the sinister.

        Theme: Murder (1998) 56 mins. In 1968, Boston art dealer Hyman Swetzoff was beaten and left to die in his Bay Village home. The murder remains unsolved.

 

In an interview, Gilooly said, “I can feel the similarity in my films more than I can describe it. I do try to balance a commitment to emotional authenticity against a censorial style of editing driven by evocative images, atmospheres, and sounds. The experience I strive for while making films has sometimes been described as a musical approach to editing—articulating a composition between the poignantly lyrical and the brutally direct. I have not made many films and when I do it is because I feel a real compassion for and deep understanding of the complexities of the human emotion that I try to translate (https://saint-lucy.com/conversations/jane-gillooly/).

As for Leona’s Sister Gerri, she said, “I wasn’t making a film about abortion, I was making a film about shame.