Splicetoday

Moving Pictures
May 21, 2008, 08:30AM

In Search Of A Mom

A Syracuse University film student set out to accomplish more than his senior film project: he made a movie about the search for his biological mother. When he finds her he's forced to negotiate the conflict between real emotional expression and the detachment necessary to create a good film.

"Discovering exactly where and who he came from was never a priority for Ventura growing up. He was content with his life and rarely gave his birth mother a passing thought. Until he arrived at Syracuse University.

Here, Ventura was away from the family he was so familiar with - and began thinking about the family he knew nothing about.

"In college, you're not with your parents, you have all this idle time by yourself," Ventura said. "And I'm not much of a student, so I spent a lot of time thinking more about it."

Once the Venturas gave Chris the adoption documents, Chris discovered the name of his biological mother was merely blacked out with Sharpie - and he could easily decipher it.

With a simple Google search last summer, Ventura was able to locate the exact address of where his mother lived - in Texas. Now it was time to expand his film - to create a climatic ending.

With his birth mother's address in hand, ready to go to Texas without speaking to her beforehand, Ventura sent her a letter, saying he'd like to meet her, but no pressure, and enclosed his phone number.

Some other things came full circle when Ventura met his birth mother. In a rare twist of fate, she was unable to have children after Ventura, so she has two adopted kids of her own.

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