The beauty of art is in its ability to explore. It can give artists a space to dive into issues they’re facing and use creative tools to find meaning amidst the chaos of internal struggle. Miranda Stern’s NFTS grad short milk is very much an example of this, a personal document of Stern’s journey as a recovering addict as she finds herself contemplating motherhood. Rather than adopting the typical doc format of a three-act structure and talking heads however, Stern and her team use an abstract, mixed media approach that asks the audience to lean in and bring themselves into the film and the filmmaker’s experience. The result is a cathartic, empathetic watch that attests to the film’s ability to make sense of the nonsensical. DN joined Stern, Producer Ashionye Ogene and Editor Yiwei Pu, as milk makes its way through the festival circuit and competes as a finalist for the 2024 Yugo BAFTA Student Awards, learning about the decision to bring in different artistic practices to tell Stern’s story and the challenge of assembling said footage in the edit.

Making a film that’s based on such personal material can’t have been easy, how’re you feeling about the film now that it’s on the festival circuit and being seen by audiences?

Miranda Stern: Everything, from my relationship with Producer Ashionye Ogene, Editor Yiwei Pu, Sound Designer Liam Sharpe, Composer Rotem Frimer, Cinematographers Essi Hyrkki and my partner Julyan Sinclair was part of such a supportive and collaborative creative process. Every team member really responded to the ideas and materials in a very visceral and instinctive way that just blew me out of the water, time and time again. I think because it’s personal material, I had to lean on them more than ever, but they really managed to stay authentically true to the film’s heart, whilst also bringing something uniquely creative and distinctly their own which is such an amazing skill that I really admire.

What did the beginning of creating milk look like and how long have you been making it for?

MS: This film was our graduation film so it took almost a year in total, but in a way it was different to any other film I’ve ever done… The starting point was these boxes. I wanted to see if you could tell the story of someone’s life through the objects they’d left behind. I’d carted these boxes of my Mum’s stuff around my entire life but never properly explored them, I didn’t know anything about her really. When you are a child who loses a parent, it’s almost impossible to process… And because there is a silence around it, you learn not to talk about it. You learn to bury it. Then as I was thinking about starting a family myself, I felt like I needed to explore that silence or find a way to speak to it, to understand it.

 I wanted to see if you could tell the story of someone’s life through the objects they’d left behind.

The boxes were never going to tell me everything, just like you can’t capture an entire life in a film. So we incorporated a kind of ellipses, epiphany and eclipse into the structure, embracing the absences and gaps, like the gaps between the notes in a piece of music. The silences and omissions kind of gave birth to the tension of the film, it became as much about what we left out as what we included, we wanted the silences to hang, hoping that the viewer might feel these silences say more than words ever could, because there are some things that just can’t be said.

What changed for you once you were underway in the production of the film?

MS: The more my desire to be a mum increased, the more I wanted to find out about my own mum, because how can you be a mum if you never had one? And motherhood as a recovering addict is not only shrouded in stigma, but is also a medically, ethically, and psychologically complex terrain to navigate. Part of making this film was about confronting my own sense of guilt and shame, to see if I could give myself permission to be a mum. Because I know I could be a good mum, or good enough, but I also know I could be the worst kind of mum imaginable. Then the links between opioids and parental love just made so much sense and unlocked everything. It was terrifying, but also empowering and healing, it became a story about survival. How you can be bowed but not broken by addiction and loss. So we wanted to try and subtly point to this connection between love and heroin, in a chemical and neurological sense.

In my experience, every addict I’ve ever met is self-medicating something in the best way they know how, some deep-rooted pain, trauma, or underlying mental health condition. Yet addicts are still demonised, dehumanised and seen as weak willed or lacking in moral turpitude. Only when you start to see it as a strategy for survival, can you really start to understand addiction I think.

It was about the texture of bringing these different elements into one space, and essentially sticking it all back together with glue, but imperfectly, so you could still see the cracks.

Could you talk about the structure of the film and the creative decisions you made to shoot the film with a mixed media aesthetic?

MS: This film is a reframing of the experience of an addict, now in recovery; a woman, thinking about motherhood; and a couple, trying to negotiate processes of care, and what it means to care for each other in this situation. It’s like a mixed media scrapbook aesthetic, a bit like one of those mix tapes we’d all make when I was growing up. We used such a range of equipment, from Alexa Mini, Sony FX9, digital cameras, to Super 8, 16mm, old VHS, and even phone footage. Like the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi, it was about the texture of bringing these different elements into one space, and essentially sticking it all back together with glue, but imperfectly, so you could still see the cracks. Kintsugi is the art of sticking broken ceramics back together with golden glue, the idea being that it is only more beautiful for its cracks, its flaws, its history. This became a metaphor for how we approached the whole film. It was the act of piecing back together all the scattered, jagged, and broken bits of my mother’s life that somehow helped me make sense of my own life, but like the act of filmmaking itself, it is a journey that will never feel complete.

How long were you specifically in production for, in total?

MS: We filmed milk in three blocks and multiple locations around Scotland, the National Film and Television School sound stages and Dean Valley Studios in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Weaving this personal, observational story of going through the boxes and seeing where the objects took me, and to whom, with something more heightened, more performative. We wanted to move away from talking heads, or relying too much on words, to try and find something more expressionistic or impressionistic. It was as much about process, discovery, experimentation and play.

We played with ideas of inhalation and breath with sound design and the motif of the plastic bag – an overdose is when your body literally forgets how to breathe – and the theme of emptiness by filming abandoned and derelict buildings, bringing characters into the space and then making them disappear; and using movement and performance, almost like a Greek chorus, to speak to ideas about addiction, recovery, and how the opposite of addiction isn’t being clean and sober, it’s connection, belonging, finding your tribe… And it speaks to all mothers in recovery, and in a way we’re all recovering from something…

We wanted to move away from talking heads, or relying too much on words, to try and find something more expressionistic or impressionistic.

Who are your cinematic influences? And what about their approach to cinema affected the way you made milk?

MS: Part memoir and part video installation, this film is stitched together and punctuated with abstract imagery via the use of performance, texture, fabric, and light to explore an expressionistic inner journey. Looking to the art world, video installations and choreographed movement to represent the processes of discovery and memory, like visual poems. I was inspired by filmmaker and artist Zia Anger and wanted to incorporate these elements of performance to make something that feels a bit like installation. I was also inspired by female Avant-garde artists and filmmakers from the 70s like Chantel Akerman, Lili Dujourie and Francesca Woodman who used their own bodies, acting as model and author, object and subject, in front of and behind the camera. Their work is autobiographical in many ways but also an ongoing investigation into how identity is constructed. How it’s in constant flux, never fixed. Staging and framing their own bodies, elliptically, politically or ironically.

I started looking to the art world, video installations and choreographed movement to represent the processes of discovery and memory, like visual poems, as well as works such as Arnulf Rainer and Picture and Sound Rushes, Peter Kubelka and Morgan Fisher, which explore and play with all the permutations between image and sound, and absence of image and absence of sound or light and absence of light in the case of Kubelka whose film is made of clear and black leader, noise and silence.

Ashionye, what’s your perspective on the project? What made you want to collaborate with Miranda to tell her story?

Ashionye Ogene: Working with Miranda on milk was a real privilege as a producer. Her approach to documentary filmmaking and collaboration is extremely experimental and deeply human. milk is an incredibly personal story for the director about recovery and relationships but it’s also a story that resonates universally with people from all walks of life. We world premiered milk at Visions du Réel Film Festival in Nyon, and after our festival run, we hope that anyone who is directly impacted by the themes represented in the documentary has a chance to see this film because of its alternative representation of addiction and its message of survival.

How did you feel as a producer about the decision to make the film through a variety of creative approaches?

AO: From the very beginning of development, Miranda and I had extensive discussions about incorporating experimental and abstract imagery into the film. We wanted the visuals to evoke emotions and thoughts that traditional cinematography alone might not capture. This led to exploring unique approaches, such as using unconventional camera angles, lighting techniques, and symbolic motifs that recur throughout milk, including the use of movement artists. The decision to integrate movement was exciting and I understood and believed in Miranda’s creative vision wholeheartedly.

We believed that dance, as a form of expression, could convey the inner experiences of her journey in a way that dialogue alone could not.

As a producer you have to protect the director’s vision throughout production and post, sometimes even from themselves if they have doubts! We believed that dance, as a form of expression, could convey the inner experiences of her journey in a way that dialogue alone could not. We spent time brainstorming with Margo Roe how to choreograph these sequences and translate Miranda’s abstract concepts into movement so they would blend with the narrative and enhance the storytelling.

Yiwei, how challenging was it for you as an editor to piece together all these different types of images?

Yiwei Pu: The process was challenging because milk is such a personal film, it requires an extra level of sensitivity and caution to truthfully present Miranda’s internal journey and the fragmented nature of memories. I was extremely grateful and impressed by Miranda throughout the making of this film. Her honesty and sincerity allowed the entire team, including myself, to feel liberated and inspired.

One of the biggest challenges was discovering the film’s language, given the variety of styles and formats in the rushes, including observational footage, personal archives, choreographed dance scenes, and abstract Super 8mm shots. Initially, we spent three to four weeks focusing solely on the observational footage, but it just didn’t feel right. It was too explanatory and fact-focused, restricted by a three-act structure, while our true aim was to explore a person’s inner journey. Then, one day, Miranda and I started with an empty timeline, going through the more abstract rushes and pulling down any image that made us feel something.

I imagine it must’ve been stressful to tear down what you had done previously and start again in such an abstract way.

YP: It was terrifying because there was no logical progression, cutting from a shot of a plastic bag to a loud knock on the door, from kids playing games to a shadow walking on the ground, but something magical happened. The magic in this process lay in the freedom to follow intuition rather than logic, to trust the emotional resonance of each shot and how it contributed to the overall narrative. That’s the moment that the film started to breathe and take on a life of its own. Like Miranda mentioned, it felt like we were piecing together a kintsugi, a mosaic of emotions and memories, rather than constructing a traditional narrative. We tried to bring out the essence of her internal journey in a way that felt authentic and raw. Each edit became a discovery, a moment of connection between disparate images that, when placed together, created an evocative experience.

The magic in this process lay in the freedom to follow intuition rather than logic, to trust the emotional resonance of each shot and how it contributed to the overall narrative.

It was about finding beauty in the unexpected and embracing the uncertainty of the creative process. This experience reinforced for me that filmmaking, especially in the realm of documentary, is as much about feeling and intuition as it is about structure and logic. To this day, I am still trying to understand exactly how we cut the film, and I learn something new each time I watch it. As an editor, I’ve grown more comfortable trusting my instincts, feeling the emotions from the raw visuals and sounds, and less inclined to confine them within a strict logical framework.

Bit of a broad question to finish on, but what would you say was the biggest challenge you faced in the making of milk?

MS: The film actually started off the back of a relapse, so we weren’t even sure if I’d be able to do a grad film at all and we had been planning something quite different, but the team were so amazing and so supportive, and together we created something really honest and raw that is about family, memory, trauma, but also has this beating heart that is about recovery. Relapse is a part of recovery, but I really wanted to drill down into the idea of what makes someone recover, like how come some people get it and tragically some people never do. Who, or what, decides?

What are you all working on now?

AO: I’m currently developing an exciting independent slate of projects which I’m producing, including a new documentary film directed by Miranda.

YP: I wrapped up a feature documentary in May, which is in the process of pitching to streaming platforms/buyers. In the next couple of months I will edit a short personal documentary, produced by Ashionye as well, and potentially two fiction short films.

MS: I just wanted to add that I really hope to keep collaborating with these guys as the collaboration on milk was something really special. As Ashionye mentioned we are working on a new doc which is in early development. I’m working on a new short fiction called Static that is being made with BBC Films x Sean Connery talent lab, shooting in Sept/Oct, and I’m finishing a short fiction Revert, which will be made with BFI Network x Short Circuit with LS productions.

I’ve also been working on a feature doc called Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands directed by musician Carla J. Easton since early development which has literally just been announced as the closing film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Luna Carmoon said recently that she doesn’t want to make perfect films and “collage movie making has lost its way”. I think that’s about how now everything has to be defined, polished, perfected and intentional, nothing is allowed to breathe as funding is squandered, everything must be justified. A world with space in which to breathe and be ugly and messy, like ‘scrapbook cinema’, these are the kind of films I’d hope to make.

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