I Can Be Your Mummy

By Gil Dekel.

What does unconditional love sound like, and how does total acceptance look like? In this film, love and acceptance are presented through a little girl (Yael-Louise Dekel) who sings to her doll. The doll has ‘lost’ her family; and the girl says to the doll ‘I can be your mummy’ and ‘I would never leave you’, offering unconditional love and acceptance, no matter what. You can hear this towards the end of the film.

When Yael-Louise (4-years old) was singing one day in November 2009, I heard a pure, pristine ‘diamond-like’ voice coming from her, so I quickly grabbed my video camera and recorded her singing. Likewise, one day she was dancing at home, and although she would always dance (as children do), that day I saw flashes of joy coming from her dance. I quickly grabbed my camera and filmed her. I later edited the two into this film.

Yael’s dance and her song were both bubbling with love and joy of just being loved and loving back with no reservation or limits of any conditioning or frameworks. Yael dances and sings as a direct expression of her feelings through words and body movement. Both are impulsive, intuitive and untutored, coming straight from the heart. Children do not think why they do things, they simply act as they feel or experience, and so Yael dances as she sings as she feels…

I can now see that the film was shot as a direct response to her child-like simplicity and impulsiveness. The room was bubbling over with magic and blurred movement and these are reflected in the blurred images that you can see in the film. I did not plan all this, and in fact I am aware that the quality of the video recording is low. This was an impulsive and un-directed recording (in bad light conditions and using home equipment), so I was wondering if it has any worth as a film at all. Yet, since the film directly represents the emotions expressed by Yael, and mirrors the inner state and simplicity that this child projects, I was convinced that the film was valuable, hence I present it online.

Once the recording was completed I approached a talented musician and asked him to compose original music around Yael’s singing. So, the music that accompanies Yael’s singing was composed separately, based and inspired by her singing. We worked very hard on the music composition, as simple as it may be. Likewise, it took a few weeks to complete a Rotroscope process, which is deleting the background and adding white background instead, working frame by frame.

I hope this film will remind the viewers to connect to their inner child, and most of all, to remember that we are loved, always, no matter what.

5 July 2013.
© Gil Dekel.