At the age of 1 1/2 years old, Marissa J. Williams lost her mother. At the time, she was too young to process death, but throughout her teen years, she encountered each stage of grief, except one: acceptance.

“I don’t think I’ve ever accepted it and I don’t think I ever will,” Williams said.

Many people don’t even know that she lost her mother, but that all changed with the creation of her film, “Lamentation”. For Williams’ senior project at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she wanted to step out of her comfort zone and create a film that expressed how she felt about losing her mother without using any dialogue.

Lamentation is an experimental narrative, short, dance film that explores the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but through dance and gestures. The only parameter Williams gave herself was no talking.

“I really wanted to use the body to express emotion,” she said. “In my experience of film, especially film school, a lot of my projects try to say a lot.”

Through a good friend, Williams found the star of her film, Sage Feldges, who does ballet throughout the film.

Feldges has been dancing for 20 years and three years professionally, and she just couldn’t say no to this opportunity. She loved the storyline and that dance was being used to tell that story.

“I love the connection you can make with an audience member…without even speaking,” Feldges said about dancing. “It can touch people in an incredibly deep way.”

To make sure the gestures matched the emotions, Williams revisited her old writings and poems she wrote while going through the grieving stages. Williams looked for adjectives, colors and sounds that reflect the emotions she wanted to portray. Williams and Feldges went back and forth bouncing ideas off of each other. Feldges also rehearsed a lot on her own and would send Williams recordings of her dancing for feedback.

Creating Lamentation was a rollercoaster ride for Williams. There were many times Williams wanted to give up or thought that she couldn’t do it, but she credits her support system for pushing her to complete the film.

“I’m really proud I was able to complete it,” Williams said. “I didn’t want to come out of this saying, ‘yeah, I tried, but I could’ve tried harder.’”

Through months of planning and filming, the 10 minute and 11 second film was selected as the Best Student Experimental Short at the Indie Short Fest Los Angeles International Film Festival. About 13,000 films were submitted for this year’s film festival.

Williams didn’t expect to be selected because she felt Lamentation wouldn’t stand out against other films, since her film didn’t feature dialogue. Winning proved to Williams that she can do it and that she can be successful at whatever she wants.

“If I work hard and apply myself, I can really be in charge of my own future,” Williams said. “Always believe in yourself because it takes a lot of risk and telling yourself you are worthy and capable to achieve things.”

Lamentation’s full credits can be found below:

Director, Producer, Production Design, Edit and Sound Design, Marissa J. Williams; Starring and Choreographer, Sage Feldges; Director of Photography and Colorist, Eric McCambridge; and Composer, Graham Hartlaub. Special Thanks to Indiegogo Contributors, Family and Friends, The Electric Sun Corporation, The Castor House Spencer Ortega, Sam Rodgers, Caz Voorhees, Ben Hogue, Lori Felker and senior class and Jesse McLean and senior class.

Contact Marissa J. Williams via email to see Lamentation at marissa.williams.media@gmail.com.