WILBERFORCE: THE FAMILY ART MOVEMENT

Somewhere in my early thirties, two great things happened.  My uncle and then-aunt dropped two new members into the family:  my sweet little towheaded cousins:  a lovely little girl named Abby, and around 2 years later,  her brother Roscoe — who, it must be said, was born with a certain natural stage magnetism. 

I was terribly impatient for them to begin talking, so I could recruit them for my high-concept, no-budget, completely exhausting family Christmas videos.  (Readers of Cintra Wilson Feels Your Pain may harken back to an earlier installment called “Consumption,” which details the various theatrical tortures I put my ex-husband’s young nieces and nephews through in the name of amateur movie magic and holiday home entertainment.)  

The kids and I opted to name our family troupe - a variation on our two family names mashed together:  WILBERFORCE. 

To broaden the children’s horizons and tamp down my general family boredom level, I wrote films with an air of Victorian cruelty.  The first epic, “Dance of the Outrageous Serpent,” which featured 7-year old Abby as an orphan sold by her prestigious girls school into a life of slavery at the hands of the gypsies.  The gypsy camp was assembled by dragging all the family rugs into my mother’s living room around a table, where my entire family in various costumes of shady-looking fancy dress were playing high-stakes poker.  

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There was going to be a wonderful moment where, after cheating at cards and trying to escape, I threw myself over the card table with a violent Aikido roll, and the room erupted into mayhem.   It had to be perfectly choreographed, since we could only set it up and destroy the room once.  The scene came off without a hitch — only my uncle forgot to press “play” on the camera, so we lost the shot entirely. 

I gave the children lines I would have enjoyed as a child — slightly questionable lines written by a smart-assed adult, which at this point was me.   After witnessing the electrifying “Dance of the Outrageous Serpent” performed by 5-year old gypsy king Roscoe, Abby, with her hair teased out like the Bride of Frankenstein, looks into the camera with her eyes wide and says, “I feel…..MORALLY CORRUPT.  And I LIKE IT.” 

I won’t spoil the rest for you, except to say that that line in “Dance of the Outrageous Serpent” so offended my Aunt, a Scientologist, that afterward she privately contacted everyone else in the family and insisted that they disown me, since I was clearly a horrible influence on the children.  If they didn’t, she said, they would never see her again.  The kids and I went on to make several more films over the years; I haven’t seen my Scientologist aunt ever since. 

The next year, for our follow-up adventure in cinema, the family really rolled out the stops. The movie: BABY FRANKENBURGER.  This time we had my mother, a pianist, write us a terrifying theme song.  To shoot the WILBERFORCE logo, my father, a renaissance man who can pretty much make anything, built us a giant Tesla coil, and engineered a way for us to have a sinister talking glove emerge from a pool of flaming motor oil right in our own kitchen.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> 

I play Dr. Frankenburger, a scientist who yearns to have children, but can’t, so ….she opts to invent them.  I thought the entire thing was a hilarious romp — and it largely was.  It was only the next Christmas that I discovered that Abby, who played one of the babies Frankenburger, was absolutely traumatized by having to perform in a fairly populated public park wearing green makeup, giant platform boots, a beehive hairdo and a large diaper.  I had no idea at the time, of course, that she was so intensely miserable — her performance was hilarious and outstanding —  but Abby flatly refused to participate the next year (and later wrote her college entrance exam on the difficulties and tribulations of having an “insane” cousin, i.e. me.) 

So, Roscoe and I carried on alone in the Wilberforce tradition the next year.  I wanted to encourage Roscoe to help in the creation process, so the two of us collaborated on a kind of post-apocalyptic cooking show called “Cooking With Cats.”   It involved a lot of fire extinguishers and raincoats, but despite the difficulties posed by getting the alcoholic cats involved to pick up their cues, the Cat Egg dinner we created was a completely inedible triumph. 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It was three years until we could convince Abby to work with us again.   Our next film was “Schadenfreude with Jaundice Needler,” a kind of Entertainment Tonight parody in which Jaundice (played by me) interviews the now wildly successful Frank Frankenburger (Roscoe)  about his latest projects, including his new CD of love songs, “Let Me Be Frank.” 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The compulsive filmmaking really seemed to light a  fire under young Roscoe.  The Wilberforce identity began to really take hold.  I had customized, embroidered jackets made for me, Roscoe and Abby.   Roscoe became a crack film editor.   We collectively decided that Wilberforce was a cult, and Roscoe set about creating our next film: a piece of recruiting propaganda called “Triumph of the Wilberforce.” It is an entirely deranged little movie completely in keeping with the Geist of Wilberforce, which evolved from being the name of our family film production company into something much darker and more unwieldy.   Wilberforce had evolved into a kind of a dark, unhinged entity and/or eldritch power. 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Roscoe’s greatest effort as Wilberforce’s director came when he was in high school — we attempted our most complex film to date, “Wilberforce Ex Deus,” the tale of an innocent young nun who finds herself face to face with the terrifying power of Wilberforce after being assaulted by the fiendish mother superior of the convent (played by me, imitating Richard Burton). 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Roscoe and I continue to collaborate.  On the Wilberforce page we have on YouTube

 (https://www.youtube.com/@Wilberforce-FAM/videos)  

you can find some additional projects:  an ASMR video Roscoe and I made with Roscoe in drag, and a commercial for my editing services. 

The thing about Wilberforce, ultimately:  it utilized the best skills of everyone in the entire family, and was more or less the only time during the holidays that everyone pulled together and got along (if you don’t count my aunt the Scientologist….and I don’t).   

Wilberforce is a feeling that on some terrifying evening you might find..WITHIN YOU.  Join us. 

CintraW@gmail.com

All artwork by WILBERFORCE.