by Dov Kornits
With their short documentary, mother and son co-directors Jesse Samos Leaman and Maite Martin Samos, are off to North America’s largest documentary film festival, Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival in Toronto.
“Working with my mother made it special,” says Jesse Samos Leaman about his co-director Maite Martin Samos, who brought the subject of Mother of Chooks to him in the first place.
This was the first time that the pair had collaborated in such a way, but it was an inspired project.
Mother of Chooks centres on Elaine Janes, who, after losing her sister, found comfort and purpose through an unexpected bond with a chicken named Flapper. Over time, that bond grew into a small flock of rescued chooks, and a deeply felt new chapter in Elaine’s life, which has included skateboarding with her chickens, taking them to the beach, and giving each one love and dignity.
“Having my mother [Maite Martin Samos, left] at the helm with me really helped me hone in on what it was about, and I’m going to sound like a broken record, but it was about showing this love that Elaine had for her chickens,” Jesse admits. “Elaine has no family left, and maybe there is an inkling of that sadness there, as she says herself, ‘if you don’t have any family, you sort of can fall into a hole’. And that’s where I saw that these chickens meant more than just fun, or a distraction, as she says in the film, they were ‘bodies to love, they keep me very busy, busier than you know’.
“The process allowed my mother and I to connect and make something that we could be proud of together, and the fact that the world is getting around it, and people are understanding it, is truly special. We made conscious decisions after many debates about editing the film to be more ‘marketable’, me on the side of cutting minutes to make it more sellable, and mum arguing about keeping it honest and beautiful. And she won me over! Who gives a shit what other people want? We decided, if we love the film, and Elaine does and it tells an honest story, then we are happy.”
How did you fund the film?
“We actually had no funding, This purely was my mother and I working together over years when we could find the time to shoot with Elaine. Covid really took a stab at us because I live in Melbourne and we were not able to shoot with Elaine, nor see each other for almost the good part of a year with the border to Geelong essentially blocked.
“And then once again fate threw challenges at us; just after we locked in our final cut, I being perhaps a fool and having too much faith in the world, had my laptop and the latest cut of our documentary on that laptop sitting in my car in a secure carpark at Cinema Nova, where I went to support another local filmmaker by watching their film, and when I returned to my car, my windows were all smashed and with that, my laptop with a month worth of our latest cut on many of my hard drives, my work, and my camera, gone.
“We got our back up drive, thank god I had one with my mum, and set up to re-do the last months’ worth of cutting adjustments. It was painful, but we had already promised Elaine we would do a cast and crew screening in a few weeks time. So, I used that to inspire myself to stop crying to myself and get to the edit!
“All the crew, the colourist, the sound editor, everyone came on as people that believe in my mother and me. This has been a labour of love.”
What does getting into Hot Docs mean for the film and you as a filmmaker?
“It truly is a special moment, and such a reminder to do what you love. As I said, there were different cuts of this that maybe had shorter run times and maybe were more “marketable”, but we stuck to our guns, we honoured what we wanted to do, and having a major festival see that is special. We have also been accepted into Doc Edge Festival, which is New Zealand’s documentary film festival and we will be having our New Zealand premiere there! It’s exciting to see more love coming our way.”
What’s next for you as a filmmaker?
“I’m working on a new project called Far West — a photographic study and documentary shot deep in the Australian outback. It started as a simple idea: follow a photographer into remote towns to capture the people and places time seems to have forgotten. But the further we went, the stranger and more magnetic it became. It’s raw, funny, sometimes dangerous — and filled with real people living lives that feel pulled from fiction. It’s still unfolding, but I think it’s going to be something special. And, I am also writing and developing my first fiction feature film with my co-writer Taylor Adams which takes inspiration from our debut short film Lorne, starring Guy Pearce. After the success of that short we have been writing this project, which takes some inspiration from the world we built in that short. So hopefully see that up soon!”
