FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

Wabi-Sabi

The Perfection Of An Imperfect Life.

Synopsis

When we’re young, we want the perfect life. As we get older, we learn real life isn’t perfect, but what does a perfect life mean as you face certain death? Writer/Director Clara Chong goes on a personal journey through her immigrant mother’s imperfect life full of shattered dreams, failed relationships, and a rare terminal disease most have never heard of (MSA: Multiple System Atrophy) and discovers what the Japanese call ‘Wabi-Sabi’ – a way of life where true beauty is found within imperfection, and it’s only in all of the broken pieces of an imperfect life that we can truly find perfection.

Director’s Statement

One night six months ago, I was talking in bed with my Producer/Cinematographer husband about the conversation I had with my mother earlier that day. My vibrant, life and food loving mother was feeling suicidal because her rare terminal disease had worn her down. She talked about the failure of her life, her choices, her dreams and her Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) – a disease so few had heard of, let alone understood, even within the medical community.

I realised as filmmakers, we could give her a legacy through film. We could show her how much she has impacted on all of us and how even with her broken life, how she is an inspiration, not a failure.

We began filming the next day, on 28 August 2019. My mother’s aged care facility, Lulworth House, gave us complete access and as we recorded interviews with my mother, the aged care staff, her friends and family including her grandchildren – and us – my mother’s story evolved to become the story of ‘Wabi-Sabi’, the Japanese philosophy of finding perfection from imperfection.

This has been the most personal filmic journey of my 20+ year career. When we showed my mother a special Work-In-Progress screening on the 15 October 2019 while her younger sister was in town to say goodbye, my mother cried. She cried for the person she was, and the person she became, but mostly she cried because she said she was so happy I was telling her story.

My mother finally succumbed to her disease 6 days ago early morning on Saturday, 22 February 2020. My sister and I were both there by her side.

Before she died, she made me promise I would complete her story, so with “Wabi-Sabi: The Perfection Of An Imperfect Life” I present a story about family, ageing and finding the meaning of life.

It is my hope that after viewers finish watching, they reach out to those they care about and give them a big hug.

Real life is full of broken dreams and missed opportunities, but a perfect life embraces all we’ve experienced that make us who we are. As long as we have each other, that’s ok.

Clara Chong

Writer/Director, Sydney, Australia 28 February 2020