ALMA

Margie Thorpe works as a barkeeper and sings in her own country band. This film, of which she is both the leading character and co-producer, deals primarily with Margie's complicated relationship with her mother Alma. Born in a southern working-class family, Alma is a charming, funny, but mentally disturbed woman, who conceals the traumas of her past behind wry humor and denial. At age seven, she was raped by an uncle in a cotton field, an incident she refers to as her "first date". Past lovers are romanticized as bank robbers, murderers, and Elvis Presley. In 1965, when Margie was still an infant, Alma was given electric shock treatment in a psychiatric clinic. These events had dire repercussions on the family's life, and made Margie's youth hell. In this intimate and darkly humorous portrait of the Thorpe family, filmmaker Ruth Leitman follows Margie's struggle with a mentally ill mother and an abusive, alcoholic father. Alma is an unflinching examination of family secrets, love and abuse.