Things We Keep

Things We Keep from David Cooper Moore on Vimeo.

Things We Keep is a short documentary by filmmaker David Cooper Moore. The film was completed as a graduate thesis project for Temple University’s Film and Media Arts M.F.A. program.

Summary: A filmmaker and his family cope with the loss of a mother in the things they kept after her death. This documentary uses the powerful but often arbitrary nature of family documents to explore how trauma changes the lives of children as they start their own families.

Artist’s Statement: Things We Keep (2011) is a culmination of six years of reflection on and exploration of a childhood trauma. When my mother, Karen, passed away in January of 1992, my family was devastated by the loss, but we had also prepared for its possibility in the years preceding it by making home movies and keeping journals. This film documents but also questions the objects and experiences we shared during that difficult time, and examines them 20 years later as the children, now adults, start their own families.

About the Filmmaker: David Cooper Moore is a graduate of Temple’s Film and Media Arts M.F.A. program, where he focused on experimental documentary filmmaking, a media literacy approach to film pedagogy, and copyright and fair use policy for documentary filmmakers.