Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film. Ricky D'Ambrose's The Cathedral is exclusively showing on MUBI starting September 9, 2022, in the United States, Canada, and select countries. It screens as part of the series The New Auteurs.
Ricky D'Ambrose on the set of The Cathedral. Photo by Michael Kohlbrenner.
Historical research for The Cathedral involved scanning 30 years' worth of family photographs and digitizing hours of home movies: organized by decade and subject, and sometimes sub-categorized by object (i.e., living room furniture, birthday party decor, wedding reception place-settings et cetera), these images functioned as the cast and crew's official visual reference library. And for nearly a year, from the time I began writing the script in March of 2020 to the start of production in April 2021, I looked at those images—really looked at them, in a way I never thought I'd ever want or need to—again and again.
One should probably never pore over their childhood so ruthlessly, with a taxonomist's zeal. As I've learned, there's a risk involved: soon enough, your mother and father (and grandparents and aunts and uncles) become, simply, a few faces in pictures, documentary evidence of changes in taste across time, and therefore strange and unknowable. Looking at these pictures now, I wonder if, in the process of making a film about my family, I denatured them in some way. I leave the rest up to you.
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