Shelter, an independent bio-documentary feature on the relationship Lorna risked with her adoptive family by searching for her birth mother was completed in 2002. Shelter premiered at the Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema in 2002 and traveled the festival circuit for the next year. In 2002, the Boston Society of Film Critics named Shelter Best Discovery and the film was released theatrically in April 2003.
SYNOPSIS
Shelter exposes the often damaging effects of adoption and reunion when filmmaker Lorna Lowe risks the already fragile relationship with her adoptive mother by searching for her birth mother. The film is shot five years after Lorna has met her birth mother, however the effects of her search are still felt by her adoptive family, who once supported her search but are now offended by it. Uncovered in this emotional narrative are the circumstances surrounding her adoption as well as the legacy of physical and emotional abuse suffered by her mothers, a likely explanation for the physical and emotional distance they have placed between themselves and their daughter. Shelter reaches beyond a daughter's search for identity into the search for a mother's love.
FILM TREATMENT
Lorna begins her search at 21, after spending her junior college year abroad. With help from the court and people she finds from her mother's past, Lorna finds Michelle at 38, with two children, twice married to abusive husbands and seemingly hiding out in rural Virginia. Charming yet overbearing, Michelle speaks her mind and talks trash. Despite her steely exterior however, she melts into tears when she tells Lorna about the day her mother forces her to leave Lorna behind for Yale.
Several years after Lorna has located her birth mother, she learns the effects are still felt by her adoptive family, who once encouraged her search but now consider it a betrayal, a statement that they failed as parents. Her confusion by their sudden withdrawal of support is heightened when she is snubbed by her brother (also adopted) and her adoptive mother threatens disinheritance.
Her adoptive mother too bitter to forgive and her birth mother too consumed by guilt to foster a new relationship, Lorna considers abandoning the painful pursuit to be loved by them.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
"I originally intended Shelter to be a story about my reunion with my birthmother after 21 years, however it has gone far beyond that onto even rockier ground – the wiping away of [my] illusions about motherhood. My hope is that Shelter will help other daughters realistically assess their own mother-daughter relationships and make healthy, adult choices based on an enlightened reality. I want us to realize that the "love" between our mothers and us is not so sacred that it cannot be questioned. That if we have the courage to question it, we are in a better position to end destructive, generational patterns passed down from our mothers mothers to them and so on."
