Heartland: Noah Arjomand
The former Indiana University fellow talks about making the intimate documentary, "Eat Your Catfish," that chronicles his mother's battle with ALS.
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Noah Arjomand is an academic who has been studying at Indiana University. He was also the primary caregiver to his mother, Kathryn, during the last stages of her battle with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease. With the help of his co-directors Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen, Arjomand set up a camera above his mother’s wheelchair, the footage eventually becoming the feature documentary, “Eat Your Catfish.”
Obviously your mother’s condition was already on your mind, but what gave you the idea to film it for a documentary? You’re an academic by training rather than coming from a traditional filmmaker background, right?
I went to grad school in New York City, where I lived with my parents and helped take care of my mom. I’m a sociologist, meaning broadly that I study how people live together. I took a few classes on visual ethnography and documentary film, and at some point it occurred to me that I had very intimate access to an interesting “field site” in my own daily life.
Many people quietly worry about one day facing paralysis or terminal illness. Some know friends and relatives who have experienced comparable hardships. Others might wonder how or if they would manage if thrust into the role of either patient or caretaker. I hoped that an honest, unvarnished presentation of my family’s day-to-day struggle might serve as a catalyst for people’s conversations and reflections on these difficult topics, and also help viewers who are living through something similar to understand that they at least aren’t alone.
What do you think is the portrait of your mother that emerges from the movie, and what do you think she hoped people would take away from it about her as a person?
I hope that viewers don’t see my mom as either an object of pity or a hero-saint. Because both of those narratives would round off the rough edges that made her interesting and reduce her from a full human into something like a mascot. Instead, I hope that the portrait that emerges is of Kathryn as a woman with a familiar palette of desires and emotions, from anger to joy to guilt, facing relatable challenges of motherhood and marriage under extreme circumstances. For her part, I know my mom wanted to be seen not as a passive victim but as a plucky fighter with a fierce wit.
Once the notion of a documentary was set, how did you go about finding other crew members to contribute and what did they bring to the finished film?
This film’s creation was only possible through a partnership with Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen, my co-directors and co-producers. I had the initial idea for how to film my family, but on my own I had neither the storytelling chops nor the emotional wherewithal to turn that idea into a feature-length film. I also never wanted “Eat Your Catfish” to represent my own insider perspective as one of the characters of the story. What was more interesting to me was to know how an outsider would make sense of my family’s struggles. Whose side would they take in the constant fighting? Would they understand why my mom wanted to go on living? Could our experiences resonate with someone from a different cultural background?
Adam and Senem (who by the way are husband and wife and were raising two kids of their own while watching my family life from afar) were able to view the footage as empathetic outsiders and understand how to edit it into a coherent narrative as experienced filmmakers. They were really the chefs in the kitchen, transforming the raw ingredients I provided them into the dish we ultimate serve to viewers. I played the role of farmer and then of something like health inspector, advising them on the ethical and factual dimensions of the many different cuts of the film they experimented with over the years.
Later in the process, we brought in some additional talented professionals. Editing consultants Tobi Shimmin and Yorgos Mavropsaridis, sound designer Adrian Lo, and colorist Silvia Pozzi all played critical roles in turning our project into a film of international caliber. The score is by IU Music School alumnus Daniel Whitworth, who managed to enhance the scenes and my mother’s words with remarkable sensitivity and grace.
Talk a little about the technical challenges of setting up a camera above her wheelchair. The wide-angle perspective, with just the top of her head showing, feels oddly intimate.
“Eat Your Catfish” was in a way easy to film. Once I designed a camera and microphone rig that I could mount to the back of my mom’s wheelchair, I could simply press the play button and let it roll for 12+ hours straight. With a fisheye lens positioned just over her head, footage approximated Kathryn’s field of vision, allowing the viewer to accompany her day and night. Because there was no crew present during filming, the recording setup just kind of blended in with all the equipment around that kept her alive and allowed her to communicate: the ventilator, eye-tracking computer, suction unit, and so on. We all more or less forgot about the camera, which is part of why the film feels so intimate and real. Nobody was acting for the camera.
How much did you film and for how long? How painful was it to decide what to leave on the cutting room floor?
It was in the editing process that we (Adam and Senem, mostly) faced our greatest challenge. I shot well over 900 hours of footage over the course of three years. With that much rough material, Adam and Senem could have created an infinity of different films. They could have presented any one of us as the hero, any one of us as the villain. Editing took so long — around seven years total — because narrowing down that infinity of possibilities while still telling a true and fair story was such a complicated undertaking. We also of course had our own favorite moments that revealed something specially about a character or relationship or made us laugh or cry whenever we saw it, but that just did not fit into the story structure that Senem and Adam ultimately crafted.
I’m sure people’s initial reaction to the film is to divide the people into “characters” — the victimized woman, her loving son, the villainous father, the hopeful daughter about to embark on her own marriage. But as I watched I was astonished at how nuanced the portraits are and how everyone is shown good and bad sides. Did you think much about this while filming was going on?
While filming, we didn’t want to make editorial decisions about what the story would be. That would have limited the documentary to a combination of my own very biased perspective and to Adam and Senem’s preconceived notions about what life is like with ALS and how to tell a story about disability and home care.
The nuance of the film’s portraits is a product of my co-directors immersing themselves for years in the hundred of hours of footage I shot, reflecting all along the way on their own reactions to what they saw. As they’ve explained it to me, Adam and Senem themselves felt their allegiances shifting and their view of each member of my family evolving over time. Through brilliant editing, they figured out how to lead the viewer on a similar journey, from passing judgment and taking sides to ultimately understanding each of us, our aspirations and limitations, from a place of nuance and empathy.
How has this film project impacted your family’s relationships since your mom’s passing?
My sister still hasn’t seen the film. I can understand why she feels she isn’t ready. My dad came to our premiere in Amsterdam. He bravely watched it for the first time right there in the cinema and then talked with audience members after the screening. As much as the film shows him in a critical light, he appreciated its honesty and how we captured my mom’s sense of humor.
I think the film actually had the biggest impact on my relationships with my extended family on my mom’s side. My aunts and uncles would visit us whenever they could, but several have told me they never quite understood what we were going through until they saw “Eat Your Catfish.” They also all wished there was more they could do for us when my mom was alive (there wasn’t; that’s the brutality of ALS). The film became a way for them to offer support, both by helping to fund the production and also by digging through their personal archives for old photos and correspondence with my mom, some of which made it into the film. The film closes with the song “Journey’s End” that my uncle Michael Worrall composed and performed, and elsewhere featured music of my wife’s ensemble Siren Baroque. So it was a family project in a lot of ways!
What’s next for you?
In August I left IU Bloomington, where I was a fellow in International Studies for the past four years. I’m now getting started at the Writing for the Performing Arts program of the University of California - Riverside, where I’m working on new projects related both to my personal experiences and to research I’ve done in the Middle East.
