The 21st edition of the Camden International Film Festival in Maine celebrated its opening in the most emotional fashion imaginable, with a screening of the award-winning documentary Come See Me in the Good Light.
Ryan White’s film, an expected Oscar contender, tells the love story of poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, and how they responded to Gibson’s cancer diagnosis in 2021 and a recurrence of the disease the next year. The surprising degree of joy and laughter the couple was able to experience together, even as Gibson learned their cancer was terminal, has touched audiences since the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
On July 14, Gibson passed away, just under a month shy of their 50th birthday. On Thursday night, Falley made her first public appearance since her wife’s passing, attending the CIFF screening of the documentary and taking part in a conversation afterwards. At the request of moderator Beadie Finzi, Falley shared words she wrote the day after her wife’s passing.
“The morning I woke up without Andrea in this world,” Falley read, “I wrote my first line of poetry in ages: ‘Come back to me as lightning,’ I pleaded to the page, ‘a certain snap in the sky.’ The poem scribbled in a sleep-deprived stupor of grief went on to list the many forms I want Andrea to return to me in. Turns out that’s just about every form imaginable, all kinds of weather, the entire spectrum of flora and fauna, flotsam, jetsam.” (Falley paused to add with a laugh, “I’m glad I got some [flowery] words in there. They [Andrea] would not appreciate any of that.”).
Falley continued, describing the ways she wants Andrea to return to her: “’Every shade on the color wheel of emotion, fury and wonder, creativity and longing, faith and doubt. Come back to me as doubt,’ I wrote. ‘Visit me as the voice in my head that says I’m overinterpreting, imagining it all. Come in the form of losing all my faith for a single day and come back as something undeniable — our initials carved into a tree we’d never seen. My love, I cannot bear to lose you. Let me find you again in everything.’”
She added, “I have a sweet story about that. [Author] Glennon Doyle and [gold medal-winning soccer star] Abby Wambach, after I posted that, sent me a picture of our initials carved into the tree in their front lawn. They’re wonderful people.”
White attended the screening at the Strand Theatre in Rockland with producer Jessica Hargrave, as well as Falley.
“I miss Andrea so, so much,” he told the audience. “It’s only been two months… Andrea was able to come to Sundance where we premiered and then they virtually stopped traveling. So, normally at these events, Andrea and Meg would be popping up behind us on a Zoom screen and Jess [Hargrave] and I would be saying nothing. And the fact that that’s not happening right now is incredibly gut wrenching for me.”
“This is a life-changing film. I can speak for both of us,” White continued. “Jess and I have been best friends since we were little kids. We’ve made a lot of films together going back to when we were nine years old… This was the most joyful experience that we’ve ever had in our creative lives. And I think that term, ‘privilege of a lifetime,’ gets thrown around pretty loosely. But I think for us getting to make this film — I’m sure Andrea would disagree with me if they were here right now — I cannot imagine a bigger privilege in my career moving forward than getting to be with the two of them for the last two years. And I’m okay with that if that is as good as it gets in my career, if that is the capstone for feeling that privilege.”
Hargrave spoke to the way she has been impacted by spending time with Gibson and Falley.
“The big broad strokes lesson for me was to appreciate the everyday and to be grateful for what I have because I may not have it,” she observed. “I know I won’t have it forever and I don’t know when that day will come. One of the things I say to myself sometimes is, ‘I’ve got these three weeks,’ which I love because it’s like we don’t know what’s coming. I actually don’t even know if I have these three weeks, but I’d like to think that I do and what am I going to do with them? Spend some time worrying about that thing that’s actually quite meaningless, getting mad at that person cutting me off in traffic? I’m not doing that. What if it’s my only three weeks? I’m going to spend them differently. So that’s something I tell myself.”
Come See Me in the Good Light has won top jury awards at the Seattle International Film Festival and Boulder International Film Festival, as well as audience awards at Boulder, the Sundance Film Festival, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and Hot Docs in Toronto. It premieres globally on Apple TV+ on November 14.
Finzi, co-director of Doc Society, asked Falley to offer a recommendation of one of Gibson’s books for those interested in exploring the late poet’s works. “I always think with poetry the most recent’s the best,” Falley replied. “So I’d go for You Better Be Lightning.”
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