Babette's Feast (1987)
Note: I originally posted this over on my patreon, but I wanted to preserve it here as well. I wrote it as a mid-year reflection back in July, and I'm going to add a bit to it.
Her Head in Films has existed since 2016. I took an extended hiatus, starting in 2021 and lasting until my mother's death in June of 2025. Despite my grief, I decided to recommit to the podcast in the months after her passing, and I have consistently put out episodes for over a year now.
I've put my blood, my tears, and my heart into these episodes.
I no longer promote the podcast. Last year, I gave myself permission to leave social media, as it was not a nourishing or positive space for me. I release the episodes, and I hope that they find the people who need them.
I am not a content creator. I am simply a woman who is saving herself through art. My life is in this podcast. It is an expression of my inner world, my thoughts, my feelings, my passions.
My patreon is the most meaningful way that you can support me and the work that I've done for a decade now.
Here is the original post (with a few things added):
We're over halfway through the year, and I thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment and reflect on the episodes I've released so far and my overall mission with the podcast.
I've always said the podcast is about more than film. I've also said that it might not be a podcast at all in the traditional sense. It's closer to an audio diary or perhaps a series of voice messages I'm sending out to strangers around the world.
After a decade, you'd think I would run out of things to talk about. What I've discovered this year is that, for me, cinema is an inexhaustible artform. Instead of running out of ideas for episodes, I'm bursting with them. My only limitation is my time.
I'm 130 episodes into this project, and I feel like I'm just getting started. The older I get, the more I grow, deepen, and learn, which gives me even more to share.
It hit me recently that many of the episodes are a way to document my encounter with a film and how the film transforms me or stirs me in some way. I am drawn to certain films because I want to deeply probe a specific issue or question in my life.
I actually don't want to be a film critic in the conventional sense. I'm also not necessarily interested in ranking films, keeping up with new releases, providing hot takes, or engaging in online film discourse.
I am using cinema to ask questions about life. Some of the big, philosophical and existential questions I've been asking lately are: How should I live? How do I survive grief and a life without my parents? How does art save me? What is the meaning of my life? What kind of woman do I want to be? What do I want to contribute to this world? What do I want to leave behind?
Each episode I've released so far this year asks many different questions.
With The Red Shoes, I asked: What does it mean to live passionately? How do I reconnect to my creative fire? Is it enough to live for art? What is a woman allowed to desire?
With All That Heaven Allows, I asked: What are my deepest longings? What kind of love do I envision, even if I never get to experience it? What is a woman allowed to need? How do we live and love as a form of resistance? How do we rebel against the dictates of society?
With Babette's Feast, I asked: What is my artistic offering? What does it mean to make that offering without demanding something in return? How do you make a life after everything has been lost?
With The Heiress, I asked: How do I accept the lack of romantic love in my life? How do I honor myself in a world that has made me feel small and unlovable? What does it mean to walk my own path even if it is solitary? How can I be a wise, strong, and sovereign woman?
With El Sur, I asked: What does it mean to walk out of the shadow of my father's death? How do I carry the past inside me without being consumed by it? How do I transform haunting into devotion? How do I live with my wounds without being destroyed by them?
With The Verdict, I asked: How do you save yourself when you're in the depths of darkness? What does it mean to fight for a cause that is greater than yourself? How can we be transformed by the suffering of others? How do you hold on to your soul in a corrupt world?
I guess I am living according to Rainer Maria Rilke's advice when he wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:
I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
I hope that my listeners find the podcast valuable, but, more than anything, I hope that perhaps these episodes invite them to ask their own questions about life and art. I hope that my musings are a catalyst or starting point for their own inquiries.
I am not an authority on film. My interpretations are not definitive, nor are they always resonant for everyone. I think that's okay. My reach is small, but I hope these episodes are finding the people who need to find them.
I often wonder if my voice matters. There are so many people talking about films online. Why should anyone listen to me? It's a valid question, and I'm not sure I have a persuasive answer other than to say: Offering one's heart matters. Saying something true matters. Trying to reach another and make them feel less alone matters.
Her Head in Films is so much more than a podcast at this point. It is my offering. It is an expression of my life force. It is how I am heard and how I bear witness to my life. It is proof of my existence and a way for me to keep from disappearing.
Thank you for listening.