Inherited Displacement and Relational Remembering in Once My Mother by Sophia Turkiewicz

Abstract

This chapter explores, through the examination of Sophia Turkiewicz’s documentary Once My Mother, the mechanisms of recovering memory in the multifaceted context of displacement. It concentrates on a specific mode of relational remembering, offering critical reflection on memory transmission in the situation of a fractured mother-daughter relationship and disconnection with the motherline. In the context of a masculinized Australian culture and migration narratives, it thus offers a particularly valuable gender-specific perspective on memory. The concept of postmemory provides a theoretical framework for the analysis, but it is expanded to take account of troubled intergenerational relations as well as an endangered memory of Soviet crimes.