about
About the film
After losing her good friend Yo, filmmaker Anna Fitch spends a decade obsessively building a detailed 1/3-scale version of Yo’s house. It’s just big enough for Anna to squeeze through the door and inside lives a 20in puppet of Yo. When the pair met, Yo was 73 and Anna just 24, but over almost two decades of friendship, they form a deep bond that defies the gap in their ages and experiences.
The film juxtaposes intimate vérité of Yo's last year with Anna's creative interpretations of Yo's dramatic life stories. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Yo lived life on her own terms, defying expectations around sexuality, mothering, aging, and even death. As the film blurs memory, time and invention, it also reveals the power of artistic creation to channel--and share--grief and love.
Director’s Note
15 years ago, I lost one of my closest friends. Her name was Yo. When we met, I was 24, she was 73, and it was a love-at-firstsight kind of friendship. Yo was many things to many people: a great-grandmother, career weed dealer, intellectual thought partner, psychic, hostess, and—sometimes— tyrant. To me, she was an inspiration: a seer of truth. I was not ready to lose her.
A year before her death, I started filming our visits. Yo often described her life as a series of deaths and rebirths. The film is built from a collection of stories that Yo tells me about her past. These epic tales, which span eight decades and three continents, invite us into detailed memories and focus on pivotal moments of transformation. I bring each story to life through handmade interpretations of her words using miniature sets, puppetry, insect actors, and paper dioramas.
Yo transports us into life as a non-conforming woman in post-World War II Europe. In her early twenties, she was a part of post-war emigration to Australia with her first husband and first two children. She then moved to the central coast of California in the mid-1960’s where she described finding her tribe in the counterculture movement. For the next 50 years, Yo continued to defy conventions of femininity and sexuality— and eventually aging and death.
Unafraid of being judged, Yo shares herexperiences with an unusual level of honesty.
The film weaves together Yo’s incrediblestories, my artistic process and creations, and intimate moments from her last year. In theverite footage before her passing, I am thefriend and caregiver who is present for theend of her life. I also appear in the film as Imove through my own emotional journeyin the 12 years after her passing. Theseelements come together to explore thepower of friendship and what we learn fromeach other through life and after death.
FILMMAKING TEAM
Directors: Anna Fitch, Banker White
Producers: Sara Dosa, Hannah Roodman, Banker White, Anna Fitch
Editor: Banker White
Cinematographer: Banker White, Andy Mitchell, Anna Fitch
Music: Tyler Strickland
Sound Design: Jeff King, Lawrence Everson
Set Design: Simon Cheffins
Puppet Maker: Robin Frohardt
Executive Producers: John Boccardo & Derek Esplin, Maida Lynn (Facet), Pinky Promise (Jessamine Burgum & Kara Durrett) , Robina Riccitiello, Sheri Sobrato, Sons of Rigor (Douglas Choi Martins Bassinger, Storm City (Dennis Masel & Gabrielle Nadig), Whitewater Films (Rick Rosenthal & Nancy Stephens), Katy Barksdale (Rockdale Foundation)
