community – MoM

With the goal of sparking conversations around the topic of caregivers, breadwinners, and family policy, film director Bonnie Silvestri hosts an online film screening and post-film talkback.

The film Funnel of Dreams follows Silvestri, her husband, and their child on a quest to understand the United Kingdom’s policies for families. These policies include paid parental leave, childcare services, and the children’s right to play.

This way of life is often featured in academic presentations about Scandinavian countries, but in this film the Silvestris investigate how paid family leave affects families in the United Kingdom while they spend time together.

“In the midst of a global pandemic, we wanted to think about our work/home life paradigm and how we might improve things for a better future,” says Bonnie. “In our film, we dive into the history of motherhood, the struggle for women’s rights, and the issues related to family leave in the lives of working parents.”

Bonnie continues “When we became parents, we were surprised to learn that the United States is the only industrialized nation not providing paid family leave.”

She explains, “We wanted to learn more about a country with a robust framework for new parents. Our short documentary film explores our personal experience with our young daughter living overseas along with interviews with parents, policymakers, and other experts.”

The film was an official selection of the Through Women’s Eyes International Film Festival, Social and Economic Justice Festival, and the International Social Change Film Festival among others.

For over a decade Bonnie has taught courses including Women and the Law at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and won the 2015 Graham-Frey Civic Award from the Florida Campus Compact for outstanding contributions to the development of civic learning and engagement in sustaining participatory democracy.

Funnel of Dreams is 34 minutes in length and will be screened in our Zoom room (LINK IS HERE/ JOIN AND RSVP) at the MOM Community site on Sunday May 22. The film will be screened first with a discussion to follow for a total of 90 minutes beginning at 7PM and ending at 8:30PM EST. Hope you can join us!

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As January ramps up, Americans and indeed, people around the world, are experiencing a kind of deadening whiplash that feels deeply problematic. From pandemics to earth shattering social events, our planet seems to be pushing back in unprecedented ways. Are we going to listen?

Here at the Museum of Motherhood our aim is to inspire as well as to educate. How do we balance dire predictions, and unrelenting reality, with uplifting content? Do we pretend, making conscious decisions to ignore what is right in front of our faces, like the movie Don’t Look Up? Or, do we create small changes through everyday actions by staying vigilant, practicing tolerance, and also heeding the call to make amends, offer support, or reach out to someone in need?

What does change even look like anyway? How can we possibly have any affect on anything when everything feels bigger than us as individuals?

In my experience, it is the little things that count. It is the everyday actions of many people doing one brave, smart, or kind action that inspires connection, healing, and hope. I think our lives are made up of little moments. Those individual moments can be transformative: One football play can win a Super Bowl. One song can reach millions of ears with a message of encouragement (or laughter). One person, holding someone’s hand in a hospital can mean the difference between fear and comfort.

At MOM, we are comprised of the individual academics, artists, and students who gained insight during their time with us, the visitors who told us their secrets and asked for help, and the strangers who have connected through the years– who are not strangers anymore.

We are a small museum with big dreams. But, more than the big dreams, we aim to touch hearts and minds individually. We aim to offer a safe space of illumination and awe. I’m excited to introduce some new initiatives in the coming months that include an online community, our upcoming conference, and a newly launched storefront that will feature guest artists.

When a friend wrote me recently, and included a note (along with a check), that stated my/ OUR museum was wonderful – I realized a simple dream of mine – the dream that others would want to take MOM on as their own. It was never intended to be ‘my’ museum, even though I have been nursing it along all these years.

As we look back, let us also look forward. Let us rally against the darkness by joining our individual lights into a collective of lights, each bright, each different, and all connected. Let us remember the souls we have lost, while lifting our own spirits in unity and appreciation of this brief, difficult, and tenuous life we share on this planet and try to ‘do better’.

I send you peace in the New Year.

Martha Joy Rose, Founder/Director