lymph
A FILM BY TESSA V. WEDBERG
lymph, a film by Tessa V. Wedberg, After college I got a job on my first film set and came back to Nebraska to work on Full Ride in the summer of 2001. It was the intense humid heat of a midwestern summer, and I was on my feet twelve plus hours a day as a production assistant; about mid-way through the film my legs began to swell and ache. I hid it from everyone because I desperately wanted to keep my first job on a film set; I’d found my new home and people within this new world. The discomfort and swelling intensified and my legs began to seep fluid and by the end of the film, I could barely put shoes on or walk. It took a year or more of wildly expensive testing to diagnose and begin to treat what they diagnosed as primary lymphedema. My mum was diagnosed with secondary lymphedema in her early 70’s and I have met and talked with so many doctors and therapists over the years I started to imagine a way to build awareness around it through our personal experiences and be vulnerable around something that is pretty hidden in my life, and also play with the documentary film form in ways that excite me. This is a first step and I’m already developing relationships with Dr. Dayan, Dr. Figy and others already but I want to eventually partner with hospitals and lymphatic educators, CPT’s, doctors, practitioners, and surgeons to learn more about the state of research, surgeries, healing and treatment possibilities for folks all over the world and to try to create some community around it in Omaha, NE as well.The film (or series of short films that might catalyze a feature) might be part of a greater body of work that engages in photo, audio, and other mediums and could exist in galleries, hospitals, and less common mediums for the work to live in. I'm hoping it can help patients and doctors working in these fields feel excited about the unique approach to the film and how it can spark joy and create conversation and connection worldwide and open up the way we talk, think, and create about disease.
Donate to lymph
lymph is fiscally sponsored by Amplify Arts. Through fiscal sponsorship, artists, organizers, and cultural workers in the Omaha area can leverage some of the benefits of Amplify’s tax-exempt status to solicit tax-deductible donations. Donations to Languid directly support the artists, filmmakers, editors, and musicians working in collaboration to realize the project.
Tessa V. Wedberg is a filmmaker, writer, and mixed media artist. She has been freelance writing and in various roles on film, music video, and commercial sets for over 20 years. She is directing more, creative consulting for a variety of companies, and the scope of her practices are expanding. Tessa is creating new bodies of work with photo, film, poetry/text, glass, audio, light, fabric, installation and beyond. She is interested in how we heal, how solitude and connection, truth and discomfort transform and guide us, live in our bodies, and influence the ways we go home. Part of her practice includes archival letters, images, artifacts, and film reels kept by her grandmother and great uncle. She cherishes getting to collaborate with people in her family, across memory and time, who documented, kept, and wrote down what became history.
Tessa got a BS in Journalism and concentration in film from The University of Oregon. She produced the Faces from the Interior film series featured at The Joslyn Museum and the photography and short films featured in The Grid at the Luminarium (and directed a few). A collaboration with Ikran Hamza and Kristin Zahra called Poet(s) was chosen as part of the video wall gallery at Millwork in 2024. Her X-ray lightbox pieces and images on glass showed at the APMA Gallery in early 2025 and the LALA arts organization is supporting a prototype of a larger work called Telephone that will be installed in fall 2025. She is currently writing and directing a documentary/hybrid film called (working title) Lymph, in post on a short, creating a poetry series, and more.