I Found a Small Lemon Tree: Film (2014)

BY EMILIE SANDY

Originally developed during my MA in Photography, I Found a Small Lemon Tree began as an exploration of spiritual communication through film, focusing on transmediumship and the practices of spiritual mediums. Through interviews, observation, and collaboration, I documented the processes, environments, and rituals associated with communicating with the dead, drawing inspiration from Victorian spirit photography and theatrical séance spaces.

During the making of the work, both of my parents died. The project shifted profoundly and became an intimate exploration of grief, memory and after-death communication. My parents became the emotional centre of the film.

Using extracts from diaries written during my father's terminal illness, reworked into a spoken script, I narrate the film myself. The moving image unfolds through long, contemplative shots of places, objects and interiors connected to my parents. Derelict spaces, inherited furniture and antiques become traces of lives once lived. My father's identity as both an antique dealer and hairdresser remains present through the objects left behind, sitting alongside the everyday furnishings of contemporary family life.

The film explores presence through absence, asking how photographs, objects, places and memories continue to hold emotional significance after death. Through its slow pacing, reflective narration and atmospheric imagery, the work invites viewers into a space between grief and acceptance, where loss, hope and the possibility of continued connection coexist.

Content note: This film contains references to terminal illness, death, grief, and after-death communication