Dempsey Rice was 18 when her mother killed herself. That suicide, in 1987, followed two years of odd behavior that might have tipped the mother’s mystified family to her self-destructive impulses had they been familiar with the symptoms of long-term depression. With Daughter of Suicide, Rice documents her experience surviving her mother’s death while she mounts an inquiry into the new treatments and therapies that can prevent depression and suicide. "Depression is a disease that kills, and suicide is truly an epidemic, but people don’t talk about it," says Rice. Through extensive interviews with her family and her mother’s friends as well as her own on-camera commentary, Rice creates a chilling portrait of a woman in crisis. She also provides an impressionistic account of the terrors that can overwhelm adult children of suicides, many of whom worry that they have inherited a predisposition to end their own lives.

Rice grew up in Virginia and graduated from Syracuse University in ’91. She was studying visual anthropology in a British graduate program at the University of Manchester when she made her first doc short, As Long As They’re Muslim, about the Pakistani immigrant family she was living with. "Ethnographic and documentary film are quite similar although the latter is more accessible," she says. Determined to continue as a filmmaker, Rice relocated to New York and began a process of self-education through seminars and apprenticeship, working on series like American Masters and Jennifer Fox’ "American Love Story". She contacted cinematographer Jim Denault for d.p. recommendations after seeing his work on Nadja and Denault, a coveted collaborator among Manhattan indies, signed on himself.

Daughter began shooting (in digital video, 16mm and Super-8) late in ’96 after an initial round of financing inquiries yielded donations from Studio Film and Tape’s Carol Dean and from R.E.M. After watching footage, HBO came in with enough funds to get Rice to the ’98 IFFM with a 20-minute rough cut approximating the first third of the film. Daughter screened to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response at the market, and HBO committed to finishing funds in exchange for broadcast rights. The film will debut on the channel’s new series, "Double Exposure," later this year. All other rights remain available.

Crew: Producer/Screenwriter/Director/Sound Mixer, Dempsey Rice; Director of Photography, Jim Denault; Editor, Pola Rapaport; Advisors: Kenya Napper Bello, Su Friedrich, Judith Helfand, Mickey Lemle, Allie Light, Alan Ross. Contact: Dempsey Rice, daughter one productions, 751 Manhattan Avenue, #2L, Brooklyn, NY 11222. Tel/Fax: (718) 389-7154, Voice: (917) 833-0903.

Cement - Adrian Pasdar
Daughter of Suicide - Dempsey Rice
The Dream Catcher - Ed Radtke
The Five Senses - Jeremy Podeswa
Harlem Aria - William Jennings
Jump - Justin McCarthy
The Opportunists - Tim Perell
Smut - David Wendell
Why Love Doesn’t Work - Julie Davis