Mirrors explores the memories of an aspiring dancer named Crimson. Struggling to identify her own creative initiative in a sea of projected desires and desired projections, each of these memories represent unbearable conflicts within the dancer. The pain of suppressing her feelings comes to a pivotal breaking point moments into the opening of a major dance performance, when Crimson spirals out of reality and into her traumatic past. Through her eyes, the past and present blur as we encounter a scrutinizing audience, an unsupportive lover, and a nightclub full of strangers. This film dives into the terrifying frontier between the artist and the artist's endeavor. It wishes to confront fear with the intention of emerging alive, active, and powerful.

Because this is a short dance drama, the narrative relies heavily on the force of the character's physical actions through movement. This allows the audience to engage with greater intimacy those questions that might be answered more easily in symbols than words.

• What happens when we truly advocate for ourselves?
• What happens when we choose to embrace our inner critic?
• What ideas must be released?
• What effort must be shed?

A Personal Note from Director/Creator, Mary Marxen:

I've gone through my rendition of recovery and am still healing from a lifetime of negative thought and self-deprecation. I became extremely out of body when I was a teenager.

My parents encouraged play growing up. They loved us being children and I had major guilt around developing into a woman. I wanted to stop growing up in order to please them, so instead of dealing with those feelings, I resented them and abandoned my home. I became a heavy drinker at around fourteen years old, considered friends' houses more of my home than my own, and started seeking validation from detrimental men. All that drinking affected my physical development, and I had a lot of shame wrapped around my actions. In turn, I lost the ability to feel my own body. Literally. I am currently being examined to determine whether or not I suffer from a condition known as depersonalization. The only way I can describe the way it feels is that I can't feel when I touch my own hands to my skin.

The disconnected feeling I have with my own physical experience of the world has never gone away, but I have long decided to live well regardless. I share all of this because it is the deepest origin of my art. Mirrors is a manifestation of my working through recovery. It is about the endurance, courage, healthy living, and the strength it has taken me to go on that journey.

This film is here for others who desire to overcome major obstacles in their lives. It speaks to those who have struggled with addiction, suffer from severe self-deprecation in all the ways it bears its teeth, and/or have been affected by an abusive relationship/s.  Mirrors will speak to subjects that are difficult to talk about, or even recognize at times. It encourages viewers to make peace with whatever reality they are living in, refrain from any more harsh self-critique, and to no longer play victim to a history that is seemingly impossible to overcome.  And better yet, I hope this film encourages people to heal their lives through art, therapy, and self-expression. And to not try and please others with their work.

As Told From Director and Co-Writer, Mary Marxen

Portrait of Jacques Lacan, by Mary Marxen

This film originated from a years-worth of freeform prose poems I wrote. Each piece loosely revolves around the theme of navigating the gaze of others and the alienating inability to give a full account of the self. The poems are inspired both by painful experiences in my own life and the ideas behind French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's "Mirror Stage" concept.
I remembered how significant it felt when I was first exposed to Lacan's "Mirror Stage." His work changed my entire disposition as I began grappling with the idea that it is only through the eyes of others that I can be seen as a whole. And when faced with my own image, I am found wanting a perfect rendition of what I cannot be. This inspired me to start writing. Many poems later, I shared my work with writer/director/actor, Ian Boisvert, and we decided to adapt them into a screenplay. This is the foundation of Mirrors - a story told through dance.

One of the reasons I love dancing as a medium of expressing this story is that the dancer's body is one which has been historically fetishized. Our intent is to examine the disconnect that humans have with their own physical being. Dance, which relies on the body as its instrument, captures, in essence, the struggle between the self as a subject and the self as an object.

Lacan's "Mirror Stage" concept inspires the vantage point through which we examine the film. In turn, our aim is to reflect the gaze back onto the viewer, begging the question, "Who am I living for?" and therefore taking the first step towards true autonomy.