Elisabeth Tomlinson

THE PARABLE OF THE GROUNDED WOMAN

Our film is a parable about a woman isolated by choice who trains herself to live by a river and to learn how to navigate and survive it. Every day she rows around her island and returns home. Each cycle brings a physical consequence and an emotional tole. She deliberately puts herself through the pain.

The work is based on religious parables, their symbols, structures, and themes. The Parable of the Grounded Woman interrogates the feminine body within religious and social structures. Parables are didactic and conclusive: ours is existential and cyclical. There is a repetitive cycle of triumph, defeat, sorrow, self-hate, anger, numbness, and then resilience and routine. The moral principle is confusion in the acting, feeling, and living of this woman.

This film is based on a text I wrote as I left religion in my early 20's: my sanctuary in which I formed my identity, my purpose, and my safety. The text and then film reflect a desire to be alone, to build one's self, to establish a new sanctuary as a home from which new expansions can be imagined.

This work has been displayed as a 20 minute single screen film and as a 9 minute 3 channel loop.

The Parable of the Grounded Woman
Short Film
20:00 Minutes
2020