Maria El-Chaar

Golden Wounds

A film about a porcelain doll that cracks her way out of therapy and learns to embrace her battle scars as they heal and shine beautiful for the world to see. The visuals are based on memory from my experience with recovery from mental illness.

““Golden Wounds” highlights a girls challenge during her recovery from mental illness. Being in and out of hospital treatments and programs can be mentally draining and challenging for most patients. Although it is not discussed, it is important to acknowledge the hard work and courage that mental health patients go through on their way to sanity. One of the purposes of this film is for viewers to understand that it is harder to heal, than to live, with your mental illness. This 2D animated short film gives viewers a visual of what the patient, in context, feels during recovery. Emotions are purposely not highlighted in this film to portray the numbness of feelings. It’s important to me that the viewer reads the piece as a distortion of reality. The playful colours in this animation are what helps this film go from heavy to light hearted and easy to talk about. I want to encourage the viewer to openly talk about a subject that is avoided out of fear. One of the scenes in this short is the only reference to distortion of reality and the world surrounding the character. It not only symbolizes her struggles with balancing life and being on edge and very close to falling back into old habits, but portrays the imagination and hallucinations of the character’s way of thinking especially after being discharged from a filtered reality (the hospital). She is finally taking control of her own life and is really close to falling back into the burning lava. The one legged character is a reconstructed porcelain doll. Surrealism is my way as an Artist to describe feelings, tell stories and dive deeper with symbolism. The character design references body Dysmorphia and the struggle of balancing life during and after treatment. The cracks are important not only to symbolize the struggles of mental illness and therapy, but to highlight the wounds of self-harm. The title “Golden Wounds” is based on the healing process of the scarring on her thigh. The mending of the scars with gold is inspired by the Japanese Kintsugi. The meaning behind this method is to embrace your imperfections. To me, this meant the embracing of my past scars, the visible ones and the non-visible. The emphasis on the gold in this film is significant in contrast with the 2D minimalist animation. The reason for this is to show that your past struggles in life do not define the person you grew to become today. Notice a small detail in the film, one of the cracks on the porcelain thigh is a cross. During recovery, I struggled with my faith and was hurt by members of the church who were not educated and could not comprehend mental illness. It was later when I was introduced to the right catholic leaders of my community that I learned to lean on Christ and not on the mistakes and flaws of the world. Everything in life happens for a reason and everyone has a cross to pick up and bare. My cross just happened to be more visible than others for the purpose of sharing my story. The gold and healing in my life were only possible through my faith which is why the gold grew outwards from the cross across the whole thigh. ”