About
Based on filmmaker Dina Salha’s memory from her childhood in Lebanon of a socially rejected and reclusive artist Wadad Rawdah El-Balah, the film follows her to Lebanon to discover what happened to the artist after over thirty years of rumors surrounding her controversial life and the resurfacing of her long lost paintings in Canada.
A passionate letter addressed to the artist structures the film’s story-telling. Combining the stunning restoration process of art pieces with the renewal of an artist’s marginalized voice and life, Lady in the Garden is an emotionally and visually charged documentary of a personal journey.
Armed by memories, pictures, and connections to aging relatives, the director follows clues and stories told in interviews that guide her back to the artist’s garden in a Lebanese village where she exhumes a long hidden secret.
A passionate letter addressed to the artist structures the film’s story-telling. Combining the stunning restoration process of art pieces with the renewal of an artist’s marginalized voice and life, Lady in the Garden is an emotionally and visually charged documentary of a personal journey.
Armed by memories, pictures, and connections to aging relatives, the director follows clues and stories told in interviews that guide her back to the artist’s garden in a Lebanese village where she exhumes a long hidden secret.
Director's Statement
Lady in The Garden is a work that has a personal connection. Wadad Rawdah El-Balah, who is the subject of the film, is a reclusive Lebanese artist who is also a family relative I met as a child. She lived isolated in the village and tended to her garden. She did not allow too many people into the garden and into her life.
As a child, and her being my mom’s paternal aunt, I have memories of her being very kind yet very different from all the other women I have encountered. For years after immigrating to Canada, I wondered what happened to her as the only reminders of her existence were her paintings hanging in my family’s home in Lebanon. These paintings were lost for many years…until now.
I investigate two questions in this work: What happened to Wadad? What happened to her paintings? The journey on which these two questions took me is similar to a scavenger hunt with scarce clues based on my memory of her, some stories I heard, and old pictures taken before her withdrawal from society.
Armed with interviews of my mother, close relatives and family friends, I traveled to Lebanon following a hunch that led me back to her garden and to a key character, Naeem, who was the last person to see Wadad and the only one to keep her secret.
Within thirteen days and with limited resources, I gathered a team of volunteers who helped me film on location, track people, navigate the culture, and travel in the midst of incredible traffic jams and side roads.
At one point, I realized that there is much more research to do as the story has many layers but I had to start somewhere and I had to decide what story I was going to tell. I also had to come to terms that it is only the beginning.
“How do I start?” I asked myself. “I start with the place I know”. And my memories of her and all the questions I want to ask her were the only place I knew very well. So I wrote her a letter. which became the basic framing structure for the documentary.
In my view,"Lady in The Garden" delivers an engaging story and delivers to the audience the life of a human being and her work as an artist, as well as a journey of discovery, I believe, I am just beginning.
As a child, and her being my mom’s paternal aunt, I have memories of her being very kind yet very different from all the other women I have encountered. For years after immigrating to Canada, I wondered what happened to her as the only reminders of her existence were her paintings hanging in my family’s home in Lebanon. These paintings were lost for many years…until now.
I investigate two questions in this work: What happened to Wadad? What happened to her paintings? The journey on which these two questions took me is similar to a scavenger hunt with scarce clues based on my memory of her, some stories I heard, and old pictures taken before her withdrawal from society.
Armed with interviews of my mother, close relatives and family friends, I traveled to Lebanon following a hunch that led me back to her garden and to a key character, Naeem, who was the last person to see Wadad and the only one to keep her secret.
Within thirteen days and with limited resources, I gathered a team of volunteers who helped me film on location, track people, navigate the culture, and travel in the midst of incredible traffic jams and side roads.
At one point, I realized that there is much more research to do as the story has many layers but I had to start somewhere and I had to decide what story I was going to tell. I also had to come to terms that it is only the beginning.
“How do I start?” I asked myself. “I start with the place I know”. And my memories of her and all the questions I want to ask her were the only place I knew very well. So I wrote her a letter. which became the basic framing structure for the documentary.
In my view,"Lady in The Garden" delivers an engaging story and delivers to the audience the life of a human being and her work as an artist, as well as a journey of discovery, I believe, I am just beginning.