History, Home, Heaven and Hell

In House of Bones, a young filmmaker casts a candid lens on a family beset by doubt, disarray and sadnesst in the wake of a matriarch’s death, as they face the inevitability of losing all that a familial figurehead holds together just by being there, including a rambling old West Chop summer home and the millions of moments and memories that have been born within its walls.

Victoria Campbell, who grew up on the Island, is a self-taught filmmaker; this is her first full length feature. Though very much a document of the dissolution and reorganization families often undergo after the loss of an elder, the film plays like a dream, half-remembered glimpses of someone else’s memories. Archival footage and photographs are scattered throughout a narrative that examines what can happen to people when their worlds slip away without warning, while simultaneously documenting an earlier age on the Vineyard: the ways and mores of old West Chop.

The film screens at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven this Saturday, Dec. 12, with showings at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. Admission is $8, or $5 for film society members. Ms. Campbell will be in attendance and take questions fom the audience after each screening. For details, visit mvfilmsociety.com or call 774-392-2972.