The Adoption Story (continued)

Permanency
The overriding theme in A Place Called Home: An Adoption story is the importance of permanency in a child's life. The word permanency comes from the root word permanence, which means “something permanent”. Many children grow up in abusive or neglectful homes and sometimes without parents at all. In a home of this kind, there are very few positive or permanent things that a child can count on. While A Place Called Home does illustrate the emotional destructiveness of abuse, it more thoroughly illuminates the positive effects of permanency if given the time to take root in the right environment. Adoption is only one of a host of different ways for a child to achieve permanency in their life.

 

One hundred hours of cinema verité footage, interviews, home movies, news articles, and photographs have been collected in an attempt to capture life in the Gaunt household. The structure of A Place Called Home consists of two distinct stories that have developed over the course of documentation. The journey of the nine siblings from an abusive past and an unknown future and Jean and Tom’s journey back to legitimacy. These two heartbreaking and uplifting stories run parallel to each other, weaving back and forth, until they merge into a dramatic and tension building resolution. Moments are spent with Jean as she drops the youngest children off at preschool and wonders if the older children will accept her love and guidance. At another point in the film, Stephanie, the oldest girl, begins to show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. In another scene, after a tension filled argument with Chris, Tom and Jean debate their decision to adopt and question whether they made the right choice. With each scene building on the last, the story of both families unfolds over time. In addition to learning about the adoptive process, we uncover emotionally moving testimonies of recovery and survival.

 

 

Director's Statement

Many children grow up in abusive homes or without parents at all. Originally the film started out as a small project that was meant as a future gift to my new brothers and sisters. I thought that they could look back and see how their lives had changed and that even though they had incredibly painful lives that they, in fact, could grow and transcend that negative experience. What ended up happening was my awakening to the idea that my parents hadn't completely transcended their past and that it just might cause them to loose the nine children that they so desperately loved and cared for. So I continued to film and interview and realized that I had a profound story of loss in both families and that they really needed each other to heal. The children and my parents both needed a family. They were all part of something special and I needed to tell this story.

 - Thomas C. Gaunt

 

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