Here One Day

There’s an empty chair in the sunlight, surrounded by shadows. Filmmaker Kathy Leichter will never stop missing the light and dark presence of her gifted mother Nina, who took her life by jumping out of a window in the family’s New York apartment. Nina, who suffered from bipolar disorder, accomplished beautiful things in her lifetime: she was an educational leader, an artist, a loving mother to two bright children, and the helpmate to her husband Franz, a State Senator whose own mother, an Austrian feminist, was murdered by the Nazis. Sixteen years after Nina’s death, Kathy begins to gently free herself from her mother’s grip by fashioning HERE ONE DAY, an emotionally raw yet delicate tribute. Nina has passed many things on to Kathy, including her physical appearance and her poetic soul. In a mosaic of home footage, family interviews, and contemplative nature images, Kathy captures her anguish at losing her mother to mental illness, even as she finds a measure of solace in reconstructed memories. – B.B.