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Director's Statement

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In the summer of 2025, we gathered at the Lichtburg, the legendary rehearsal room of Pina Bausch, to create our film of Marion Milner’s, A Life of One’s Own. 

 

It was almost a full hundred years since the cold December day in 1926, when a 26 year old Marion Milner began her seven year experiment, searching for, “the conditions in which happiness occurred.”

 

We came to Wuppertal from all over the world, the UK, France, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Ireland, Germany and even Japan. Everyone coming out of a fascination with Milner’s ideas. Perhaps, in our own era of relentlessly, “mass produced ideals” we were all searching for a space to listen and observe.  

 

Our task, in the making of this film, was to capture in images, sounds and movement what Milner articulates in words. What she calls, “a private reality, a reality of feeling rather than of knowing.” The pleasure of a distant piano though an open window, the terror and exaltation of intimacy, the beauty of the ocean at night, the silence of a forest…

 

For me, it’s been a dream come true, the culmination of a twelve year journey into Milner’s work. It’s a glorious challenge to adapt this book to film and I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by the most talented and joyous team of actors and filmmakers who threw themselves open-heartedly into the process. 

 

I hope, that in the spirit of Marion (and Pina!) we’ve made something humble, true, delicate, fierce, and full of everyday beauty.

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Tom Shkolnik

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