Watch the heartfelt documentary this June
BY INDIGO SAPPHIRE MOON, IMAGE BY PEXELS
Queer filmmakers are everywhere. Some explore lesbian teen romance or the complexities of faith and sexuality. Others turned the tide and injected their deepest love into a story that amplifies the voice of their incredible partner as they battled an enemy that has no face and no heart: cancer.
Dance Me To The End Of Time is a documentary created by award-winning filmmaker, Melanie Chait, which focuses on the last four years of her partner, Nancy Diuguid’s life, as she fought breast cancer.
The film explores Nancy’s personal story and the impacts of pesticides with insights from American scientist and ecologist, Rachel Carson, whose well-known book, Silent Spring exposed the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment and human health, all the way back to 1962. Scientific study proved pesticides, such as DDT could cause cancer and those who were exposed to it were five times more likely to get breast cancer by the age of 50.
Nancy grew up on a tobacco farm in Kentucky in the USA, where small planes would spray their farms with pesticides. The documentary is a poignant and powerful exploration of Nancy’s cancer treatment and the endearing love shared between the two women. It’s not an extended meditation on death but rather on a rich and fulfilling life.
It also pays tribute to Nancy as a creative visionary, both as a director and actor, who used the creative arts and her lesbian identity as a lifelong campaign for healing and justice — from the lesbian and women’s rights movement in the 1970s, to Rachel Carson’s extraordinary legacy.
The documentary stands out from the crowd because it invests in the painful and beautiful reality of love, death and life, blending it together to remind us how important living our truth is and why the battle to be free is one of the hardest to win.
Dance Me To The End Of Time will be screened at the Cinema Museum in London on the 15 June. Visit cinemamuseum.org.uk to book your ticket.
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