My artistic research revolves around the creation of a diary film in which I address the six years that passed from the moment I decided to try to become a mother until I gave birth to my son. During these years, my partner and I underwent different fertility treatments. With the film, I would like the viewer to experience the vulnerability and fragility I felt throughout all those years: a journey in which moments of joy and hope are mixed with moments of powerlessness and sadness. A sense of smallness, facing a destiny that is beyond your control, intertwined with an urge to investigate my family stories, and what we know about our place in the universe. The research into our relationship with the cosmos and into my family archive is introduced into the film interwoven with my daily life, mostly during the waiting periods of the IVF treatments. How these three layers are intertwined is part of my personal “imaginary”, the “mythology” of the persona that I have created for the film. It is important for me not to make a tutorial on how fertility treatments work, but rather a diary in which I talk about a subjective experience, contextualized within my reality.
Vanessa del Campo is a Spanish filmmaker based in Belgium. She completed a Master in Audiovisual Arts at LUCA School of Arts, in Brussels. She had previously studied filmmaking in Spain and Cuba. Vanessa also holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.