Birthmarks mean something; Hollywood says so. Movies, from Hollywood and beyond, have attached special meanings to birthmarks as a trope or plot device to advance their particular stories but there is no consensus on the meaning; it can easily switch from one extreme to the other.

A character’s birthmark could be a devil’s curse in one movie, a mark of royalty, in the next. In the film 500 Days of Summer (2009), Tom in one moment loves Summer’s birthmark and calls it “heart-shaped” but, the next moment, he hates it and calls it a “cockroach-shaped splotch.”

From The Court Jester (1955) to The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), birthmark in the movies is a conversation piece, a gag, or proof of one’s identity. There’s gotta be reason for it to be there. And the birthmark is undeniable; it’s in your skin, in your blood…

Characters in movies have been known to fake their birthmarks, impersonate another, and then get caught because of a slip-up in the make-up. In the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy (2014) the plot-twist hinges on a beauty mark. Sometimes brilliant, the film is nonetheless too horrific for me to include in the Birthmarks in Cinema montage I’m working on. Check it out.

I am looking for more films to include in the montage, so if you think of one I missed, let me know. I want to show how pop culture subtly supports either the stigma or superstition around birthmarks. I thought it would be fun to put the film clips together in the style of the brilliant Chuck Workman (King of Condensed Films: Hollywood’s Montage Master).

I showed a longer version of this a few days ago. On St. Patrick’s Day, the “first look” at Birthmark went better than I expected. I was very nervous despite the intimate crowd (there were a total of nine spectators) at The Theatre on King. The night was not only a culmination of two weeks of editing, for me, it was a moment that had its earliest beginnings six years ago!

The feedback has been quite valuable to me. It takes a lot out of me to present the film in pieces like this but I gain a lot of insight in return. The audience seemed to appreciate the impromptu show which was part stand-up performance and part video. And we got to shoot a little bit after.

I’ve passed the project onto to Rob Viscardis; it’s in his capable hands now while I do more planning, researching and writing. Soon, there will be a second look at how things have evolved. If you’d like to join the audience for this, you can contribute directly to me or through the secret perk on my crowd-funding website.

Any donation, big or small, is really appreciated and helps the process. The Birthmark documentary is my way into a universal story. It’s about the power of story over us. I want to shine a spotlight to the fact that there is a story in our heads in the first place.

We can recognize now that the power is not actually in the story — the power is in our belief. This awareness started from the one of the most unlikely, private, and unspoken parts of my life: a birthmark and a story that it is unlucky.

I realize now, of course, that I am in control of what I believe. The environment around which I grew up supported this story about my birthmark. I found a Filipino film released around the time when my parents were kids called Mutya Ng Pasig (1949) that supports this idea.

My parents are on record that they had no personal belief in the superstitions that became part of the everyday speech that I grew up with but seeing this film clip affirmed a layer of truth. What beliefs are we unconsciously supporting with our speech today?

At twelve-years old, my environment changed drastically when my family moved to Canada but I still kept my birthmark story in the back of my mind. Many years later, I would discover that this story is still back there; silently at work in the dark.

The “birthmark effect” could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if everyone believes in it. As with the cultural practices of “bone pointing” among the indigenous peoples of Australia or voodoo in some parts of Africa, it takes a village to believe it to make it real enough for the victim to physically succumb to the curse.

Beyond the Hollywood village, I’m just starting to scratch the surface with my research on birthmark folklore and superstitions from around the world. And there is so much more to share. So, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, just for fun. Can you name all the films used in the Birthmarks in Cinema montage without looking at the list below?

Film Titles (in order of appearance)

  1. Jewel of Pasig (1949)
  2. The Court Jester (1955)
  3. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
  4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
  5. Dragonfly (2002)
  6. Heartless (2009)
  7. End of Days (1999)
  8. Willow (1988)
  9. The Crucible (1996)
  10. The Omen (1976)
  11. The Omen (2006)
  12. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
  13. Superstar (1999)
  14. Cloud Atlas (2012)
  15. Dread (2009)
  16. 500 Days of Summer (2009)
  17. Take This Waltz (2011)
  18. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)