Mary Magdaline

‘Mary Magdaline is a trip into child abuse meditated by the abused as an adult conversing with her child self. Powerful and poignant, the film is disturbing. Voices from the past move into the present. The third person is used to distance: ‘She’s very unhappy. She couldn’t get rid of him’ and more startling, ‘I don’t want to comfort her. I want to hit her.’ The images, video transferred through a video toaster to film, are blurry, beautiful, and painterly accenting the mediating process (of the filmmaker/adult body) through which the girl child speaks.
This is a brave film, a complicated architecture in which form enacts the content in an eerie match with resonance for millions of women and enough power and poetry to play and perhaps penetrate the consciousness of men who fail to think of sexual abuse as conscious violence.’ – Abigail Child.