Audiences looking for some Wicked counter-programming might find it in the documentary Witches. The film by Elizabeth Sankey, which debuts this weekend on MUBI, explores an intriguing parallel between sorcery and motherhood. The inquiry stems from Sankey’s own experience with postpartum depression following the birth of her son, and the frenzied psychological state that cast a spell over her during the early days of motherhood.
Sankey lays bare her experience wrestling with the storm of emotions she felt as a parent. She mines an archive of horror movies to explore depictions of women and witchcraft, and the elements of mental health and motherhood that inform, for better and for worse, on screen representations of women from past to present. Tropes like the monstrous body, the pure virgin, and the maddened spinster all receive consideration in a slice of cinema generally informed by the male gaze.
Sankey leads the audience to the present day and those childless witches of Wicked as she invites women who’ve shared her experiences to open up and break the stigma about postpartum depression. Her coven of talking heads, all dressed in black, begins an open conversation about mental health in tribute to women who’ve been silence since the Salem witch trial days.
“We had this shared belief that it was important that we do this,” says Sankey. “It would help other women the way that it had helped us when we talked about these experiences ourselves between us.”
POV connected with Sankey via Zoom to chat discuss Witches’ ahead of its release on MUBI.
POV: Pat Mullen
ES: Elizabeth Sankey
POV: When you were sifting through 250 Hollywood movies, was there a film that really resonated with your experience?
ES: There were so many. The films from the ’60s and the ’70s were the ones that really, in both of the way that they looked and also the content, struck me as feeling similar to what I’ve gone through. There’s this film Witchfinder General from 1968. It’s very on the nose, like a lot of big ’60s hair, fake eyelashes, and bright red blood, very saturated colours. But also it’s shot on film, so it looks great. Weirdly, that intense lack of subtlety really felt like how it was when I was ill. There was no art house edge to my horror and my experience. It was so intense. The original Suspiria of 1977 also really connected with me.
POV: The editing gradually brings in representations of mental health. It’s not right there from the outset, but when Gothika came up, I thought, “That’s an interesting choice. I kind of forgot about this film.” And then Girl, Interrupted, which isn’t about witches, appeared and I saw the pattern of psychiatric hospitals. What was you approach to gradually unfolding the layers of the story?
ES: It started off that I was going to do an essay film about my experience and use witch films to illustrate that. I had been out of the wood for two months when I started making this film, so I can’t really remember what my decisions because I was still very much mad. It’s quite hard for me to remember my logic, but it made sense at the time.
Gradually, as I realized we were going to be talking more about psychiatric wards and other women’s experience of psychiatric wards, I remember having a conversation with my producers. I was like, “Can I just also include psychiatric wards?” They were like “With fair use, if you’re talking about the depiction of psychiatric wards in cinema then, yeah.” The reason I use Gothika quite a lot is because there are so few representations of Black women in art, obviously, but especially in like psychiatric situations or situations where medical issues are not being taken seriously, which is obviously tragic, but also especially poignant because women of colour are at the greatest risk of maternal mortality.
POV: When you were assembling your coven of interviewees, what were some of the guiding principles that informed who you chose?
ES: Well, you are definitely not supposed to ever interview your friends for documentaries because you might have to cut them, I broke that rule on this occasion. I reached out to so many different women who had talked publicly or had mentioned their psychiatric illnesses, postpartum illnesses, so many women from different backgrounds, diverse backgrounds. To be honest, most women didn’t want to come and sit down on camera, and you see that in the film with Dr. Trudy Seneviratne, who is an incredible psychiatrist. She has done so much in terms of raising awareness of postpartum mental health illness, of raising money, of ensuring that there are more units and better care. Even she, when she had postpartum psychosis, went to the hospital and wasn’t believed, and also then didn’t want to tell anyone afterwards, because she knew about the stigma. A lot of women didn’t want to do it, and the women who did, they all were very willing, obviously.
I think the willingness was also there because they knew that I was going to be sharing my story too. I wasn’t an outsider coming in and saying, “Tell me about the terrible thoughts you had.” I had been through it and I was going to be sharing more of the dark stuff than anyone else.
POV: Why was it important for you to be on both sides of the camera? Was there ever a conversation about working with another director to tell your story?
ES: There was never a talk of using another director, but I did have my producers on set. My DP Chloë Thomson was amazing. She really looked after me and took care of me when I was doing the monologues. Also, I had my husband there and he would say to stop trying to make it funny. There were lots of people looking out for me, although I wasn’t I wouldn’t say I “directed myself.”
With Romantic Comedy [Sankey’s first feature, which explored romantic comedies through a feminist lens], I had done a film where it was all voiceover and I really wanted to shoot the women so you could see them and connect with them on a visual level. It just made sense for me to also be on camera and it ties back to the witch trials and this idea of testimony.
POV: In making documentaries, there’s always talk about making sure you’re not re–traumatizing participants. How do you keep that perspective when you’re the one making the film, but also the one telling the story and going to those dark places?
ES: It felt very instinctive and natural to make the film and to make it the way that I did. I have a lot of addicts and alcoholics in my family, so I’m used to groups where you go and sit in chairs and talk about what you’re going through. It felt super natural to me. It was very therapeutic and I had a therapist at the time. She was brilliant and she said to me, “In order to process what’s happened, you’ve got to move it from the back of your head to the front and the way that you do that is by talking about it.” And then the gift of getting to watch witch films all day every day was so great for my recovery because I was seeing these different types of women that I wouldn’t normally see, or I wouldn’t normally have spent time with in such an intense way. There was so much about them that I found very aspirational and appealing. It was never tricky for me, personally.
The only thing that I’ve found tricky and that I still find upsetting is David Emson and his story. [Emson’s wife Daksha, experienced postpartum depression and died in a suicide after ending the life of their child.] I’ve never been close to someone as an interviewee in that way before where you’re putting them in a situation where they’re being so vulnerable. I cry all the time and I think about them because I just it’s not something that you recover from whereas all of the other women in the story are there. They got better. With Daksha, she’s not there and she didn’t get better. That one has been the hardest to deal with and process.
