Father’s day gets easily written off as a Hallmark holiday. But when Austin filmmaker Stephanie Mishelle Ard put her debut short “That Day” online last weekend, it was a way to express something more meaningful – the loss of a parent. She described the film as “showing the experience of a teenager going through this, and the parameters they are put in, the subconscious expectations that are put on them.”
The autobiographical short is based on the time of her father’s funeral, with Mishelle (Chloe Clarke) trying to find her own space in this traumatic day. Much is based on her own memories, like sitting on the stairs during the wake, and listening to the Rocket Summer’s “Show Me Everything You’ve Got.” However, making it allowed Ard to reconstruct more of what happened during the funeral. After his death, she said, “I was definitely as a teenager a little more introverted, and pushed everything to the back of my mind. It wasn’t until I was in my mid 20s that I realized I only had a couple of clear memories about my dad’s passing, and my mom told me a bunch of other details. Like apparently I was there for when my dad’s body was wheeled out of the house, and I have no memory of that. I just blocked out a lot of things, I’m sure for self-preservation.”
“That Day” played festivals internationally from fall of 2016 (including Austin Film Festival), right into 2017, and then Ard was left wondering what to do with it. She almost released it in March, on the anniversary of his death, but decided “that felt a little too morbid.” However, this year Father’s Day coincided with her birthday, and the timing seemed perfect. “Every year I see more and more friends who’ve lost their father or their mother, and have a really hard time with Father’s Day, so I thought it was a good time to put this out there as means of sad camaraderie.”
“That Day” is online now at Vimeo.
This article appears in June 22 • 2018.