Red Boat Crossing
a nonfiction film by Jeanne C. Finley
39 minutes, 2024
1.5 minute trailer
This is history from below at its very best. It tells its tale with heart and passion and captures the granular texture of day to day life and moment by moment danger. There is not only stunning cinematography throughout but also a mother's efforts to remember and a daughter's need to know. "Red Boat Crossing" is a superb testimonial to dedication, memory, love, and the importance of the past in understanding our present.
--- Bill Nichols, Film Critic & Author
SYNOPSIS
Sixty-five years after the Allied invasion of Southern France, the director's mother, Cecily Barker Finley, tries to recall her involvement as a social worker aboard a WWII Red Cross ship, the Château Thierry. These memories are recorded in letters and phone calls with her daughter who is living on the coast of France where the invasion occurred. After her mother dies, the daughter discovers a trunk buried under old rugs in the back of the family garage. Unopened since the 1940s, the trunk is filled with her mother's Red Cross memorabilia. By carefully documenting the trunk's contents, missing pieces of the invasion story begin to come into focus. Yet, despite a mountain of facts and photographs, mysteries persist about family, war, and what it means to be a hero.
Red Boat Crossing, combines spoken and written recollections of Cecily Finley's experience taking care of the wounded, with the Historical Record of the invasion of Southern France written by the captain of the Château Thierry. Mrs. Finley tends to the emotional needs of the soldiers while filling in on nursing duties for which she is not trained. At one point, she receives leave to fly to the front line where her brother is severely wounded.
Throughout the film, Mrs. Finley's frustration with her inability to recall all the facts and details infuses the daughter's own memories with the impact World War II had on her life. Contemporary footage shot at the invasion's location is layered with archival footage from the Red Cross and Cecily Finley's personal artifacts. A small house at the invasion site that Mrs. Finley looked at while aboard the Red Cross ship, and from which her daughter looks towards the sea 65 years later, situates the two visual experiences. Together, these materials explore the mystery of one woman's experience of international combat during World War II.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
The initial inspiration for Red Boat Crossing came to me during a residency at the Camargo Foundation on the coast of Southern France. I was looking out my studio window and was struck with the realization that 65 years earlier, my mother had been aboard a Red Cross ship at that very location. We began corresponding about her experience during the allied invasion of Southern France and her work as a social worker taking care of the wounded. I also recorded her memories over Skype. Because she was in her 90's, I didn't want to lose the opportunity to hear her stories in her own voice.
There was a small red sailboat anchored beyond my window that I filmed every day as it endured dramatic storms, punishing surf, and sunny calm days. Throughout my five months at the Camargo foundation, I stared through the camera at the red boat while trying to imagine my mother's experience during World War II.
At the end of my residency, I created a site-specific installation on the interior window and exterior wall of the "Napoleon Room" at the Camargo Foundation, a room where Napoleon once slept. This nine-minute looped installation included snippets of my mother's recordings and bits of our written correspondence that floated across the wall of the building. The images projected on the exterior wall referenced my mother's view from the ship to shore, and the images projected on the window referenced my experience of the location 65 years later.
My mother died 13 years later at the age of 101. While cleaning out the house I grew up in, I discovered a trunk that hadn't been opened since the 1940s, buried under a massive pile of rugs at the back of the garage. It contained a trove of my mother's Red Cross memorabilia. As I documented the trunk's contents and corresponded with the Red Cross about donating the materials to their archive, an idea for a film emerged.
I combined footage from the original installation with the memorabilia found in the trunk and archival Red Cross footage of WWII. Quotes from The Historical Record of the Château Thierry hospital ship my mother served on, written by the ship's captain, are combined with my mother's original recollections. Photographs, letters, and documents from my mother's service 65 years ago are interwoven with footage I shot at the location when I lived there.
Red Boat Crossing brings together all this material to offer an account of one woman's experience in international combat during World War II.
"Red Boat Crossing" is an impressionistic and immersive essay about a mother's WWII service on a Red Cross ship during the Allied invasion of southern France. Through layered imagery, recorded phone conversations, found letters and the sparing yet effective use of archival imagery, we piece together fragments that add dimension to her mother's fading recollections. The end result is a moving meditation on heroism and humility.
--- Jay Rosenblatt, Filmmaker