director's statement X manifesto//

We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our isolation. We can come home again to a world that can appear to us now both as self and as lover. - Joanna Macy

Women have been separated and shamed away from their bodies, and the body of the world, for centuries. White Rabbit explores how one woman made her way back. When Jane, an overworked sexual assault lawyer and single mother is separated from her children in forced isolation during Covid 19; she is faced with the wildness of nature around her, and must confront the wilderness within.

The extent of our inner wild depends on a few things, such as how we inhabit our bodies when we are alone, who are we when no one is watching? How many days would it take to shed societal, cultural, political, and gender expectations of the female body completely? 

As a storyteller, I am fascinated by the link between the natural eroticism that exists in the earth, as an underlying force of creation; and how that is mirrored in our own flesh. Birds, bees, and the body. Adrienne Maree Brown says that, the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation. 

Turns out, Jane is one such woman.

For her, the isolation and solitude weed out domesticity, and breed a remembering. Of desire. Jane is able to tap into the natural abundance that exists between our species and the planet, which one might argue is what our bodies are structured for - aliveness, and celebration of the miraculous. 

But the film deals with more than just pleasure activism in lockdown. 

Central to the story is the relationship between the lone woman, and the bush; a character in its own right, which asks what the elemental feminine has to offer us in these times of environmental and societal crisis. She reminds us if we are separate from our bodies, we are separate from the earth. Of course climate change, and the state of the planet confirm this. As we see with Jane, if we are courageous, open, or perhaps traumatised enough to listen, the voices of the land we live on can sing us back to ourselves.

Having no dialogue in White Rabbit allows the sounds of nature the space to conduct this return. Initially the bush begins as a supportive mother, nurturing and witnessing, holding Jane, a grieving mother herself; then the elements of wind, rain, sunshine, moonlight, and soil, transition to an exciting flirtation with a long lost lover. It is this reunification that leads Jane to the realisation of herself and the earth as one.

From a visual perspective, it was important to shoot the story through the female gaze, one both in harmony with the natural world, and in touch with the feminine erotic. Through this lens, Cinematographer and Artist Meg White allows Jane to unravel her female desire, and ultimately prove that by following her holy longings, she is able to decolonise her relationship to her body, a re-matriation of not only herself, but potentially, the planet. 

This period of collective isolation is one we will remember for centuries. The film takes place in private, in a time when globally, all humans are all being faced with themselves in their homes, in a sort of mass initiation, or call to return. 

Such a potent time in history questions the relevancy of our stories, and as the planet calls for a new narrative, one where modern life in all its aspects, including the feminine is being both re-evaluated, and re-written; it is my deepest desire to leave the audience motivated and hopeful. This short film is inspired by true events, and by blurring genres of nature documentary, and narrative, it is hoped that the separation between us, and the natural world is also blurred. 

White Rabbit is a metaphysical and a symbolic striptease. From being fully clothed, caged, and disconnected from the body; to the eventual naked reunion of woman as landscape. As the final scene suggests; this courtship, a mutual dance of allurement between the two, may not be an isolated incident for protagonist Jane, but in fact a real and radical resistance of all women, as Susan Griffin said, 

We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with concept of nature. Nature weeping. We are Nature speaking, not nature to nature.