VCCA Salon to feature documentary film screening of ‘Instructions on Parting’

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Amy Ostroth


Craig on precipice “Craig on the precipice,” Amy Jenkins, from her film “Instructions on Parting”


Sweet Briar’s monthly VCCA Salon will feature a powerful, feature-length documentary screening of “Instructions on Parting,” directed by artist and VCCA fellow Amy Jenkins. The screening will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in the 1948 Theater in the Fitness and Athletics Center on Sweet Briar’s campus. It is free and open to the public.

Over the course of one tumultuous year, Jenkins confronts the cancer diagnoses of her mother, sister and brother, and also welcomes her first child to life. Crafted in a unique visual style, the film weaves breathtaking vignettes of nature unfolding with cinéma vérité family footage to lead us to a bold and daring acceptance of our own mortality. You can view the trailer for the film here.

“Instructions on Parting” had its world premiere in New York City at Doc Fortnight, the Museum of Modern Art’s international festival of nonfiction film, in February 2018, and its international premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in Australia in June. It won Best Documentary at the Athens International Film and Video Festival in Ohio. Its New England premiere happened at the Independent Film Festival Boston last April and it was also screened at Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey and the Greenpoint Film Festival in Brooklyn.

Jenkins’s artwork combines video, sculpture, performance writing and audio and focuses on family relationships, desire and gender identity. Her work has been exhibited, screened and published all over the world. She has exhibited at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Haifa Museum in Israel, Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum in Austria, the Akron Art Museum in Ohio and many more. Her artwork has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, ARTnews, Bomb, Performing Arts Journal and The Village Voice.

In addition to her 2013 fellowship at VCCA, Jenkins has been an LEF Foundation Robert Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow and was a two-time nominee for the CalArts Alpert Award in Film/Video. Read more about Jenkins’s work and exhibitions on her website.

For more information about this VCCA Salon event and others, email Carrie Brown at cbrown@sbc.edu.