In Rome for a year at the American Academy, Child created imaginary home movies of scenes from the life of Mary and Percy Shelley. She was attracted to these authors - their life of poetry, politics and sexual invention - and inspired by my previous fictionalizing of home movies in Covert Action and The Future is Behind You. She worked with non-actors, the seasons and the extraordinary architecture and landscapes of Italy where the Shelleys were in exile for six of their eight years together.

The result is a feature film UNBOUND: gorgeous, emotional creatively combining new technologies with cinematic language. Digressive, looped, unpredictable, symphonic UNBOUND is a poignant and deep exploration of women and creativity, focused on the teenage author of Frankenstein. The history of the Shelleys has drama, degradation, and scandal set within radicalized politics, sexual and class rebellion and the lives of working artists. Child's deconstruction embodies the poetic primacy of memory as well as the with of techne: layered, diverted, delayed, reframed and remade.

Music by Zeena Parkins

See the trailer at www.vimeo.com/abigailchild/unboundmaryshelleytrailer

Best Film of 2014, Fronteira Film Festival - Curator Rafael Castanheira Parrode as listed in La Furia Umana, Italia

Selected Exhibitions:
ICA Boston; Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Taipei Women's Festival; Athens Avant Garde Festival, Greece; ICA London in Women's Sci-Fi

"At once a mischevious scuttling of BBC costume drama and the creative anachronism of home movies before the invention of film, UNBOUND achieves a playful mastery of form." - Jim Supanick

"exuberant . . . visually gorgeous . . . ahead of the curve . . . mixing narrative, avant-garde and expanded cinema." - Tina Wasserman, Full Frame