Clinical Associate Professor of Film Ted White is awakening audiences with “Eve of My Awakening,” a documentary that tells the story of White’s daughter Eve, who was born with Down syndrome, and White’s journey as her father.
White said that he got the idea for the documentary after recording a video of Eve receiving open-heart surgery at two months old.
“I wasn’t planning on making a documentary about my new child, but immediately after her birth, there were all these dramatic events coinciding with it,” White said. “I started filming partly as a way to cope with the experience. It gave me something to do rather than just pace around the hospital and worry if she was going to recover.”
“It gave me this creative outlet, and after she recovered, I’d amassed a little bit of footage, and I was like ‘Hm, well, this story seems to be going in a more positive, happy direction, maybe I should just keep filming,’” he added.
White premiered “Eve of My Awakening” to an audience for the first time on Thursday, October 9th at the BOMBYX Center for Arts and Equity in Northampton, Mass. White said he was happy with the audience’s reaction to the documentary.
“People were really supportive and appreciative,” he said. “It made me feel great. It was just a project I’d spent so many years working on, and then stopping, [then] working on, and just to finally have it finished. It was very satisfying.”
White also used his event as a fundraiser for Eve’s trust fund.
“We [White and his wife] decided we needed to start a trust for our daughter so that someday she’d have a chunk of money that could help her with various basic needs,” he said. “So premiering the film was motivation for us to start this trust.”
White met his goal of $100,000, with a quarter of that being earned at the event. White said that he hopes to screen the movie on campus at some point.
“I’m really excited about the feedback,” he said. “How people connect to it, what they take from it. I’m just really excited to now have a relationship with an audience rather than just making the film in private.”
Cinematographer Corey Stein, a 2012 alum of Keene State film, helped White with filming the documentary. Stein said the process was unique, as he lived with the Whites during the filming process.
“I committed to staying at their place, which was super fun and really helped tether me to the project,” Stein said. “If I didn’t commit to that, maybe I wouldn’t have been around for these really great moments that we captured.”
Stein also said he found the process extremely rewarding.
“I’m still feeling so lucky and grateful to be part of it. It’s really cool to see, over time, this thing get added to,” he said. “I’ll be eternally grateful to Ted and Eve and Katie [White’s wife] and Beckett [White’s son] for their presence and allowing me to share space with them.”
Emily Sloane can be contacted at
esloane@kscequinox.com
