Tracey Arcabasso Smith on Relative
Courtesy of Tracey Arcabasso Smith
Tracey Arcabasso Smith's Relative is a compelling family drama that follows Smith confronting her and her family's history of sexual abuse. Smith, who has previously worked with ad agencies such as Deloitte Digital, NY Studios, and McCann New York, brings precise cinematography and editing skills that allows room for self-introspection and discovery in her debut documentary feature. While her conversations with her family members are hard to watch, it is intriguing to see Smith's reactions when she digests what she just witnessed. We, an audience, wonder why a few family members are initially participating in the film before they eventually back out for various reasons, as later revealed in the movie.
"How do you become the new you while everyone wants to stay the same?" said an undisclosed male family member's recording. This audio recording is played when Tracey lies down on a couch near the film's end. The camera is at a slightly high angle which implies that Tracey has no complete control in getting all family members involved to speak out on their family history of sexual abuse. She questions if her attempts to open up about this traumatic history to her family will create a strong connection with each other or cause more psychological wounds.
Relative, produced by Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) and executive produced by Charlotte Cook (Field of Vision), made its World Premiere at the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Smith recently spoke with me via zoom before the film’s International Premiere at 2022 Hot Docs about the origins of Relative, creating safe spaces with family members, and the film’s visual and editing structure.
- NOTE: This conversation is edited & condensed for clarity, & contains spoiler alerts. -
EF: You have done a lot of advertising and creative design. What has led you to enter the documentary realm?
TAS: It [Relative] actually started as a project through ad agency McCann New York, when I worked there 13 years ago. It was a call to action to the entire ad agency, tell us what you're passionate about and we'll give you three weeks off to go make it if you are selected as the winner. At the time, I was passionate about considering [a career in] directing. There was an animal hospice with 400 Animals in Upstate New York that I was fascinated by. It felt like Grey Gardens meets Blackfish. I pitched the idea to go make a film about the animal hospice, and it was a bunch of abused and neglected animals. Through that process is what got me questioning why I was trying to make a film about animals. I cared so much about their abuse, and I realized I was empathizing with them. Essentially, I was not looking at my own pain and my own abuse. So I put the camera down and stopped making the film about animals. I started looking at my own life and the abuse that happened in my childhood. Then, the film became about that.
EF: Did you work on this film while you were working at the ad agency?
TAS: I was moonlighting the whole time, but I also took breaks in my career. I left the agency life full time and went freelance for a bit. So I had some flexibility to dive into this fully.
EF: What got you to be more open about not thinking about your own pain during the process of making the doc?
TAS: I think what drove me forward was the depths of the conversations I was having, and how important it was to have these real conversations and start the openings that that created in terms of the deepenings of my relationships and the connections that I had. That was what kept driving me forward. IWhat's the point of living if you're not going to be living in these the most authentic relationships that you can.
EF: As you said you are trying to have your authentic self. One of my favorite lines in the film was when the therapist was talking about that “you're not really connecting when you have the silence. How do you connect with your relatives with this dark history?
TAS: The most important thing that I've learned through this whole process is to accept people for where they are at and that was a big challenge for me. Some of my relatives were resistant to talking about their past or certain situations in the family, which creates an obvious tension as I'm trying to make a film and tell the story of our family. But I think accepting where people are is the practice and my biggest takeaway because you can't force someone to go into the depths of darkness if they don't want to. Maybe that's okay for them and really accepting where everyone is at is where I am now. On the other side of it.
EF: How does that tie to setting boundaries when you are filming the conversations with the relatives featured in the film?
TAS: Well, I tried to create a safe space for them to express what they felt comfortable expressing. If at some point they, as you saw in the film, some of them wanted to redact some of the information. Again, it was a challenge for me because I wanted to tell the story in its entirety but part of the story is the fear around talking about it. It’s the acceptance of where people are at and then trying to tell my version of the story in the most respectful way possible.
EF: How do you find the healing of this journey? I understand that no one will fully be healed from this, but how will you be able to reduce fears of these events?
TAS: I don't know that I can, just to be honest, but I I do know that there is for myself, an ease and a peace with just being open and honest and authentic. I hope that an audience or viewer will see that and inspire them to have similar conversations. Whether someone heals in their own life from this or not, I hope that it does. I've actually seen and heard beautiful feedback from people that it has affected their lives. I think it will affect people in the way that it's meant to be and how open they are.
EF: I do want to talk about “Nana Rae” as a filmmaker. We don't talk much about the film participants as filmmakers, She knows how to frame compositions such as the delivery of the baby in the opening scene. May you please talk about her as a filmmaker?
TAS: Well, that was shocking to me. I had no idea truly. I'm not sure if she realizes how much of a filmmaker she actually was. She sort of nonchalantly mentions that there's the camera in the closet. I think, to a certain extent, she was documenting these moments that were important to her and how much of it she saw as the nuance of what I was seeing in terms of abuse, what is play and what is sort of dangerous behavior. I'm not sure [about her filmmaking skills]. I think that she clearly was trying to tell some story. I think it's a reflection of her awareness of what's happening, whether she's conscious or talking about it with others, or letting the camera pick it all up.
EF: The home video footage is beautiful and precious. It does well how to undercut the tension. How do you know when to transition from the present day moments to the home videos?
TAS: We tried to really weave them together in a way that felt natural. One approach we took to the editing process was to reflect a little bit of the experience of abuse. I can't speak for everyone's experience, but this idea of the fractured memories and nonlinear experience. There's blurriness around these experiences, whether it's trauma, or age. We use that approach in how we built the story in terms of editing this in a nonlinear fashion, bringing in moments in the middle of a conversation in the middle of a scene going into archival into memory, and then back. So that was an intentional choice that I think served the film well.
EF: I love Topaz Adizes’s cinematography. He does a good job at knowing when to pan and tilt the camera. What were you thinking of the film’s cinematography for the present day scenes?
TAS: Our conversation was to be present in the moment. I think that he did a beautiful job, sitting with the essence of what we were talking about. I think his work captures that just in terms of where to keep and where to set the camera, where to stay. He really picks up on the nuance of the moment and even the nonverbal moments. I think he's brilliant in that way.
EF: it also includes when to avoid this certain person on camera, as well as blurring one the great aunts faces.
TAS: Actually I shot that scene because the camera was on sticks. I just happened to have it that day. Then all of a sudden, these family members started opening up about. There was a sort of unexpected moment. So that was a matter of how do I, as the person in the family and the filmmaker, allow for the conversation to happen while capturing the scene in the best way possible. So if you notice the woman in the foreground, her face was cut off for most of it or at least for the beginning of her dialogue, but I didn't feel like I could break the moment. She was talking to me about such intimate experiences in her childhood. So I wasn't gonna get up and reframe the cameras. It was a difficult choice to just kind of sit and let her talk about her experience. When I felt like I could take a moment, I just shifted it over to get her a bit more on camera. Then in regards to my aunt who didn't want to be in the film, that was another example of she was open to it at the time, but then afterwards didn't feel comfortable. I think that's okay, that just reflects the difficulty of the subject matter.
EF: As you've mentioned earlier, you're trying to have the mindset both as a family member and as a filmmaker. How do you differentiate the two?
TAS: It's hard. I don't think that there were many times where I couldn't do both and I would just have to trust my team, whoever was with me shooting. The filmmaker side of me wishes we had two cameras and fix the lighting but then the human side of me is this is what it is. This is real. This is life and that's what we captured.