Downpour Resurfacing conveys Robert Hall's rekindled sense of self and strength as he recounts his childhood sexual and physical abuse. A noted Buddhist teacher, innovative psychiatrist in body-mind therapy, and poet, Robert lays out his experience with exceptional clarity. Where grief and hatred might otherwise take root, Robert speaks without shame, illuminating peace-making responses to intrusion and betrayal of all kinds.
The documentary interview with Robert is juxtaposed with images and sounds that evoke a dream world, where the traumas take hold and can be transformed. The sense of disconnection and double life that develops from hidden childhood trauma echoes through a dreamscape of black and film collaged and overlapped, slowed and sped, like memories under duress. Country houses and rain set the surreal scene as mother and son hang out their laundry to dry. Sustaining soup is offered, but tea is poured to overflowing, as caretakers neglect their roles. His deep compassion glows as he reveals this assault neither in denial nor stuck in the necessary anger, but set on revealing the path to freedom from its violent hold. Breaking down memory blocks and denial spurs the need to find peace with the pain. Dancers communicate in movement and rhythms the trauma and its thawing as bodies hold and release it. The power of repetition moves us through to peace.