{"id":6261,"date":"2021-02-07T08:33:38","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T08:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pegasos-association.com\/?post_type=news&p=6261"},"modified":"2024-08-02T17:28:40","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T17:28:40","slug":"lauras-choice-wa-made-documentary-looks-at-a-90-year-old-womans-right-to-choose","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/news\/lauras-choice-wa-made-documentary-looks-at-a-90-year-old-womans-right-to-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura\u2019s Choice: WA-made documentary looks at a 90-year-old woman\u2019s right to choose"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Laura<\/picture><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

With the WA Government\u2019s voluntary assisted dying legislation due to come into effect next year, it might seem as though the WA-made documentary Laura\u2019s Choice, about a 90-year-old woman\u2019s desire to go out on her own terms, is extremely topical.<\/p>\n

However, it is important to note Laura Henkel wouldn\u2019t have qualified under WA\u2019s VAD laws, which can only be accessed by people who have been diagnosed with a disease likely to cause death within six months.<\/p>\n

Laura, on the other hand, had just reached a point in her long life where it ceased to contain sufficient enjoyment to make up for the growing list of ailments she was suffering.<\/p>\n

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As John Mellencamp so succinctly put it in his hit song Jack and Diane, \u201clife goes on long after the thrill of living is gone\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Laura, not only had the thrill of living gone, the will to keep on doing it had left, too, so she embarks on a trip to the other side of the world to a Swiss euthanasia clinic.<\/p>\n

But, in chronicling the final stage of a person\u2019s life, this documentary becomes very relevant to our thinking around VAD and, indeed, how families approach conversations with loved ones who are entering their twilight years.<\/p>\n

The latter is, perhaps, a rather obvious consequence of the fact the film was made by Laura\u2019s daughter, Cathy Henkel, and granddaughter, Sam Lara, both filmmakers, who realised they had been presented with a rare opportunity to probe an issue that affects many.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film will trigger people to their own experiences, and we hope people will layer their grandparents and parents over the story,\u201d Cathy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly a provocative film that will trigger a lot of reactions, maybe some quite negative, we\u2019re prepared for that, but certainly the intention was to get it opened up and to get people to have those chats with their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Laura, not only had the thrill of living gone, the will to keep on doing it had left, too<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The doco will screen at Revelation Perth International Film Festival today, having previously won the Hot Docs Prize at the Australian International Documentary Conference in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been joking that Laura\u2019s Choice is not a good date film, but how often to people sit down with the people they love and talk about how they would like to die, or their parents\u2019 death, it\u2019s the only thing that we know will happen to us but we don\u2019t talk about it,\u201d Sam adds.<\/p>\n

One of the fascinating things about the film is how it examines the issue from the perspective of three generations of women, each starting with a vastly different opinion but ending, more or less, in unison in the belief Laura was making the right decision.<\/p>\n

Cathy\u2019s journey, in particular, is hard to watch, with her mother at one point asking Cathy if she\u2019d help place a plastic bag over her head to end things.<\/p>\n

The revelation Cathy, as a 14-year-old, had witnessed her mother attempt suicide only further complicates the relationship between the two, and adds even more weight to everything we see on screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was traumatic, both when I was a teenager and then as an adult, to have a parent try to collude with you to their death, it was incredibly confronting,\u201d Cathy admits.<\/p>\n

\"Filmmakers<\/picture>
Filmmakers Cathy Henkel and Sam Lara sit with family matriarch Laura Henkel in a Swiss euthanasia clinic in the WA-made documentary Laura\u2019s Choice.<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Having to film such moments as you live through them is more confronting still, but Laura was adamant her daughter and granddaughter capture everything in the hope it could help someone else in the same situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrandma said she wanted this to be a film, and for her death to have meaning,\u201d Sam says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur ambitions are that it really starts a national conversation, but conversations can sometimes be tricky,\u201d Cathy adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only other thing I\u2019d to say is that, as an artist, if I was a novelist maybe I\u2019d write a book, or if I was a painter I\u2019d paint a picture \u2026 but this is a significant experience in my life, and my mother is a significant figure in my life, so we made a film because I\u2019m a filmmaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With the WA Government\u2019s voluntary assisted dying legislation due to come into effect next year, it might seem as though the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[39],"newstags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/6261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6261"},{"taxonomy":"newstags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.pegasos-association.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newstags?post=6261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}