Life Lessons / My Mother’s Idea

Editor

Directed by Maria Finitzo
1 hr 6 min combined, 2011

Life Lessons and My Mother’s Idea are a twinned pair: a fictional short and a cross-genre documentary dissecting the story behind the fiction.

Life Lessons is a humorous look back through the eyes of Maria, an 11-year-old girl caught between her mother’s belief that there was much to be learned in a ballet class (and by God her daughter was going to learn it!) and her wish to grow up like the rest of her friends, shopping and hanging out at the bowling alley with boys.
The art of dance and the impact that a teacher can have on his students is at the center of My Mother’s Idea; a documentary that blends fiction, archival footage, interviews and production footage from Life Lessons; to tell the story of charismatic teachers Walter Camryn and Bentley Stone, who ran the Stone Camryn School of Ballet for 45 years.