My Left Breast

Two weeks after her hair started falling out, Newfoundland filmmaker Gerry Rogers decided to videotape her ordeal with breast cancer. Filmed mostly by Rogers and her partner, Peggy Norman, and edited by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Terre Nash, My Left Breast provides an informative, penetrating and uplifting video journal of one woman's treatment and subsequent recovery. With an admirable emotional honesty, Rogers bares all--baldness, body, and insecurities--with results that are often amusing and oddly comforting. She mourns her self-image while lying in a bathtub; confesses her fears to the camera in the middle of a sleepless, nauseous night; jokes with doctors during chemotherapy sessions; and throws herself a survivor's party. Indeed, in one particularly memorable moment, Rogers lounges on a winter beach in solidarity with a decidedly look-alike seal. Throughout, her irrepressible buoyancy lends a visceral energy to the film that is life affirming without being self-indulgent. Rogers' ability to draw emotional support from friends and family is a potent healing strategy that gives her the strength to reach out to the community, participating in a local radio show and organizing a nationwide “hair-raiser” to collect hair for cancer survivors' “healing wigs.” Ultimately, Rogers' ability to find meaning, creative expression, and control in a life otherwise out of balance is powerful medicine for anyone facing a life-threatening disease. Enthusiastically recommended. Aud: C, P. (A. Cantú)