Gwen Isaac’s raw and personal documentary features in the NZ International Film Festival

The documentary is centred on her childhood with a turbulent, but talented artist mother in 1980s Kororāreka/Russell. Gwen describes it as creating the ultimate filmmaker dilemma.

“I’m worried that my students will see it, but I also really want my students to see it,” Gwen says.

This is her third documentary to be featured in the NZIFF, along with Ms Information in 2023 and Where There is Life in 2017.

The documentary took six years to produce at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University Wellington campus with the support of students, Massey alumni, and fellow staff members.

It all started when Gwen’s mother Merrilyn died, and she was sorting through her boxes during lockdown in 2020. She began to film herself unpacking the boxes and reflecting on her grief, while also trying to piece together who her mother really was.

“I sort of realised early on that there might be a film in all of this because I was interrogating family and the friends of my mother about who she really was, because I'd been estranged from her for quite a few years,” Gwen reflects.

Growing up in the 80s in Russell, her single mother was nicknamed ‘Mad Merry’ and was known for being flamboyant and out of reality due to her untreated bipolar disorder. For Gwen, this documentary was a chance to dig deeper into her mother’s identity beyond the labels.

“I've jettisoned so much of the shame that I had around my mother and I've rediscovered her through making this film.”

Gwen has been a part of Massey’s Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts for seven years and is currently a Senior Lecturer and co-ordinator of the Documentary and Factual major within the Bachelor of Screen Arts (Honours).

She described this documentary as ‘visually unusual’ from her previous films that were shot in a more observational way. For this film, there were creative elements such as VFX animation and sound design, which Massey alumni and current students helped to put together.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity of working and making films at a university as you get access to different ways of thinking and doing things. I feel really fortunate. Otherwise filmmaking is isolated until it comes to fruition, but you need support networks around you.”

Grants from Massey and the New Zealand Film Commission helped Gwen with the cost of creating the film, and she credits Massey as the reason she was able to produce it in the first place.

Since filmmaking in New Zealand can be expensive and difficult to get off the ground, she admitted that she was worried in the final year of editing.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep during that last year wondering if it had been a gamble that would pay off,” she said.

Gwen also described the film as ‘risky’ because of the personal material which she’d never divulged in a film before, ‘metaphorically and literally exposing’ herself.

However, despite her fears, Be Merry has been successful. The film has had two screenings in Auckland and Christchurch so far, with upcoming sold-out screenings in Wellington. It has particularly resonated with people who have experienced mental health issues in their family.

Gwen hopes that this documentary will help start long overdue conversations about the impact of mental health conditions on families and communities. She wants to address the enduring issue of stigmatisation by focusing on her mother’s story, saying “many women like my mother haven’t had their stories told, as their mental health challenges become their narratives and legacy, rather than their artistic talents.”

As for her advice to future filmmakers, she said that you don’t have to have expensive equipment or lots of money to do it – You just need to have an instinct and to be brave.

She explained how she feels a sense of community with her colleagues and student at Massey. “There's a sense of affirmation and it flows both ways. I really love the people in Screen Arts. They're my tribe.”

It’s a sense of belonging she hasn’t always experienced in her relationship with her late mother from who she estranged. Yet through their shared connection to art, Gwen is beginning to understand her mother in a different way.

In Be Merry, she lays her story out in a raw and personal way, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in her turbulent childhood and experience it as she did.

“It’s meant to feel like you are immersed in my childhood, which was turbulent and characterised by someone in charge who had a mental health disorder. That’s what I want you to feel when you watch it.”