Emma Miller | 2024 JFI Filmmaker in Residence
The Jewish Film Institute is proud to feature 2024 Filmmaker in Residence Emma Miller and her project Father Figures as our JFI Resident Spotlight for the month of April 2024. Read on for an exclusive JFI interview with Miller about the story behind her project!
About the Film: A newly retired theater director, Bruce, begins creating internet videos featuring intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist dummies. Struck by the fact that Bruce is far more open with his puppets than his own family, his daughter embarks on a process of collaborative filmmaking. Can she come to understand her father’s motivations and repair their fraught relationship — using dummies?
What inspired you to make this film?
Emma Miller: I spent at least a year watching with bemusement as my dad posted videos online of him talking with his dummies, and I watched as the number of dummies he had — and the range of personalities he expressed through them — rapidly ballooned. When I told people about my dad’s ventriloquism, they’d always say, “You should make a film about that,” but I’d quickly dismiss that idea because I didn’t really have a sense of what story I’d be telling. Then I started to realize that there was something to my discomfort and curiosity, and that my dad’s new hobby was actually a metaphor for the dynamics in our relationship, which had been fractured in the aftermath of my parents’ divorce: the challenge of communication, the constrictions of the roles we fall into with one another, the desire to see and be seen. Filmmaking, and the opportunity to collaborate creatively, could be a way to explore and evolve beyond those dynamics through a quirky, visually unique frame.
JFI: Where are you now in the filmmaking process?
EM: I’m currently in production on the film, while simultaneously fundraising to keep going. My goal is to be through production and in the process of editing by next year. I’m just about to film me and my dad traveling to a puppet maker’s workshop to pick up lookalike dummies that we’ve commissioned of ourselves. And this summer we have ambitious plans for stylized scenes and interviews using dummies.
JFI: How is the JFI Filmmaker Residency helping you develop your project?
EM: The workshops, guest speakers, and creative community facilitated by the residency are helping me to hone my vision, sharpen my pitch materials, and push through the inevitable challenges of the independent filmmaking process. It’s been incredible to feel like I’ve gained a network of colleagues and industry supporters who are rooting for my project to succeed.
JFI: How does this story add to our collective understanding of Jewish life, culture, history or identity?
EM: Father Figures portrays a universally relatable father-daughter story as we unpack and find humor in the subtle ways our Judaism and our cultural heritage have informed us and our family dynamics. My dad’s dummies include a Holocaust survivor, a self-made Russian immigrant, and an elderly woman named Roz clearly modeled after my grandmother. Collectively, these characters — as well as the dozens of other dummies he engages in conversation on a daily basis — have given my dad the ability to explore intergenerational trauma, his upbringing, and his own experiences as a descendant of Russian Jews. Ultimately, the film fits within a larger tradition of Jewish characters making sense of their identity, channeling their pain, and finding their voice through the process of making art.
JFI: If you could screen your film as a double feature with any film, what movie would you choose and why?
EM: I’d screen Father Figures alongside Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, which also uses humor and intimacy to depict the fallout of divorce within an academic, artistic Jewish family. I remember seeing The Squid and the Whale as a teenager — right as my parents were splitting up and we were all struggling to communicate about our feelings — and it made me feel deeply seen. I’m hoping my film will do the same for viewers.
About the Filmmaker: Emma D. Miller is a documentary filmmaker, creative consultant, and the founder of Marcona Media. She produced Iliana Sosa’s Gotham Award-nominated, SXSW award-winning What We Leave Behind (ARRAY Releasing/Netflix), a New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” and recently directed the short documentary The School of Canine Massage, which will premiere at SXSW 2024. As development executive for nonfiction at Concordia Studio, she worked on Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning films that premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and Telluride, including TIME (Amazon Studios), Boys State (Apple TV+/A24), and Procession (Netflix). She was a casting associate for Showtime’s Couples Therapy series, associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated short documentary Knife Skills (The New Yorker), and associate producer of the Oscar-shortlisted, Sundance award-winning feature Unrest (Independent Lens/Netflix). Emma was named one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” and is a Sundance Producing Lab Fellow. Emma is currently producing Elizabeth Lo’s Mistress Dispeller (Impact Partners / Anonymous Content) and co-producing a feature for National Geographic Documentaries. She is interested in forging new ways of seeing, connecting, and knowing through film.
About the JFI Filmmakers in Residence Program: The JFI Filmmakers in Residence Program is a year-long artist residency that provides creative, marketing, and production support for emerging and established filmmakers whose documentary projects explore and expand thoughtful consideration of Jewish history, life, culture, and identity.
