- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba,
host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you the story of Vivien Hillgrove,
a successful film editor, to whom visuals were everything
until she developed macular degeneration,
which slowly took her sight from her,
and temporarily, her identity.
But as you will see in tonight's documentary,
Vivien's Wild Ride, regardless of challenges,
you can't keep a true artist from expressing themselves.
San Francisco-based Vivien Hillgrove made her living
editing some of the most
critically-acclaimed and successful movies
of the '70s and '80s.
Her credits include The Right Stuff, Amadeus, Backdraft,
Blue Velvet, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
She earned the respect of her peers in the industry,
which included directors like David Lynch,
Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, and Ron Howard.
When Hillgrove realized she was going blind,
she was devastated, but interestingly enough,
losing her vision made her look to her past
and deal with suppressed wounds.
Vivien ignored the confusion and isolation she felt
as an unwed high schooler
who persuaded to give up her child.
Even in a city like San Francisco,
the 1960s was a more conservative time.
Hillgrove says she and other teen girls had no real options
regarding birth control or sex education.
And proving paternity was difficult,
making it easier for girls like Hillgrove
to be shamed by those who disapproved.
A few years after giving up her baby,
Vivien found herself in a lesbian bar,
where she felt accepted and more at home
with other creative types.
It is where she was offered a job in sound editing,
and a career was born.
All those emotions
from that liberating yet challenging time
in her young life came roaring back
as she dealt with her newly-discovered disability.
Despite all her filmmaking knowledge
from editing narrative films and documentaries
over the course of her 50-year career,
Vivien Hillgrove had never directed
until she made Vivien's Wild Ride at the tender age of 76.
It was film editing and movies
that brought her out of the darkness
and loneliness of her past, but losing her eyesight
gave the director a unique perspective on blindness,
literally and metaphorically,
and it all comes out in this film.
The master editor teams up with fellow editor Eric Ivey
to use foreshadowing and flashbacks effortlessly
throughout the film.
Adding a layer to this story
is what Vivien learns about the child she gave up,
a daughter named Kathleen,
which adds yet another emotional layer
to Hillgrove's complex story.
Hillgrove the director got to see firsthand
through her own first-person documentary
how Vivien, the leading lady,
was able to let go of the guilt and shame of her youth
and discover the freedom she experienced through filmmaking
and confronting truths from her past.
The process let her grow and evolve as a person
and a filmmaker.
For Vivien Hillgrove, losing her vision took her sight,
but allowed her to see her life even more clearly.
Vivien's Wild Ride starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.