Breakthrough Screening Series: “The Cathedral” with Filmmaker Ricky D'Ambrose
Elise Hendricks ‘28
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“The Cathedral,” an award-winning drama narrative film by filmmaker Ricky D’Ambrose, made its Sarah Lawrence premiere on Oct. 2 in the Heimbold Donnelly Theater among an audience of students and faculty. The screening was an hour and a half in length, followed by a Q&A with D’Ambrose. The dialogue allowed for the inspiration behind the film to be shed in an open, impactful light following the film itself.
D'Ambrose, award-winning writer and director, was raised on Long Island. He was rejected from New York University twice when applying for film school. Instead, he got his masters degree in film and media studies from Columbia University.
“The Cathedral” is based on the first seventeen years of D’Ambrose’s upbringing in the backdrop of the rise and fall of his family. The characters in the film are based on his real-life family and friends: American actor and musician, Brian d’Arcy James, plays his father; and American actress, Monica Barbaro, plays his mother. The film touched on topics such as divorce, the AIDS epidemic, the Catholic church and death, all drawn from real childhood experiences. The film is set on Long Island in 1986 just before our main character, Jesse Damrosch, based on D’Ambrose himself, is born. The film divides Jesse’s life into four distinct phases, from his birth up until his high school graduation and the death of his grandmother at the conclusion of the film. “The Cathedral” had its world premiere at the 78th Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It won the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards and was also nominated for Best Film at the 2022 Gotham Awards.
The film does a phenomenal job of depicting D’Ambrose’s childhood in an illustrative, vivid way. When asked about his nostalgic, rigorous film style during the Q&A, D’Ambrose noted, “Given how close I was to the material, I needed a frame around the movie. A distance from the material for myself, but also the audience.”
He described this framing of the film as something that goes through the point of view of Jesse, but also the point of view of so many other people in his childhood that were vital to the story, like family. His domestic life played a large role in his upbringing, but so did the impact of external, national events, such as the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the TWA 800 flight. He includes clips of these in the film to mirror their influence on his real life.
“All of the excerpts you see throughout the movie are as memories,” D’Ambrose says. “It’s the things I remember seeing on television, but I had no context for.”
Light is a prominent figure in the film. D’Ambrose utilizes light as a metaphor for adolescence; he includes numerous shots of light shining in through the window, on the furniture, reflecting off glass, etc.
“I had a less, let's say romantic, experience of light while I was shooting because trying to keep [the light] controlled was very difficult,” D’Ambrose said. “But, it was something that became very important to the film, windows were very important… and cathedrals.”
Following the screening, an ice cream gathering was held in the lobby where movie-goers shook hands with D’Ambrose and showered him with applause, thanking him for his appearance.