April 18, 2025
Provided image/Abigail Bruley
Abigail Bruley wrote, directed and starred in the "Main" trilogy of short films, which she made in Philadelphia after experiencing a traumatic brain injury.
It took years of rest and rehabilitation therapy before Abigail Bruley was able to rejoin the world following her traumatic brain injury. But when she did, the Philadelphia-based filmmaker had a lot of feelings to process.
Bruley, who had previously created the comedy web series "Down the Show," wanted to capture those emotions before they vanished — all the grief for her former self, rage over what she'd lost, confusion over where she was now and wild hope about the future. So she started making surreal film shorts around Philly starring a fictional version of herself.
"When your brain changes after a traumatic brain injury, you kind of become a foreign exchange student in your own body," Bruley said. "These films were kind of like postcards I sent back to myself to capture the atmosphere."
The "Main" trilogy, named after the lead character, recently screened in full at the Maas Building in Ludlow. The first chapter, "Main Blessings," finds the heroine holing up in the apartment of her friend Lars, who's suddenly determined to enter the priesthood. A clergyman, played by New Jersey rocker Ted Leo, is unimpressed.
"Main Absolves" takes the story into the suburbs, where a family gathering goes off the rails — and a bizarre neighbor crashes the party. The final film, "Main Remains," traps Main in the afterlife while her loved ones try to fulfill her nonsensical last wishes. Marisa Dabice, lead guitarist and vocalist for the Philly band Mannequin Pussy, plays her best friend. It also features music by the Philly jazz legends Sun Ra Arkestra, with permission from the Sun Ra estate.
Bruley began working on the trilogy in 2018, about five years after the car accident in Costa Rica that left her with a traumatic brain injury. When she returned home to Philadelphia, she was placed into a medically induced coma and then, when she awoke, underwent rounds of occupational and vision therapy. She also needed vestibular rehabilitation, which helps patients regain their sense of balance.
"It was a lot of learning things all over again from scratch," Bruley said. "Conversational flow, learning idioms was a big thing. On the dot, no strings attached. These things that are embedded into our everyday vernacular that when you're just relearning vernacular, you're like, what does that mean?"
Bruley's scrambled understanding of the world is reflected in her film shorts, which do not follow a clear timeline and lean heavily into the absurd. Main is an accidental witness to her odd neighbor's "sacrament" when he jumps into her family's pool nude. She also shares a joint rolled with torn Bible pages with a priest, and rides a taxi cab through purgatory. These scenes also illustrate the "spiritual quest" running through the series, informed by Bruley's own search for meaning.
"When reality stops making sense, you start looking to what else is out there," she said. "... I learned a lot about just how to be in the world through different frameworks."
Though Bruley sees "Main Remains" as a "closing to a chapter," she isn't necessarily done with these characters yet. The filmmaker said she could see them returning for a feature film or pilot down the line. But first, she plans to take her latest film on the festival circuit, just like the previous chapters. ("Main Absolves" picked up an award at the Los Angeles Film Awards in 2022.)
By making and showing her films, Bruley is striving to make what she considers an "invisible disability" a little more noticeable.
"I think people understand disability optically," Bruley said. "They understand when someone's in a wheelchair on a ramp or they're blind and need a cane. With a neurological disability, there's nothing really to show that you need a little extra help. So it really exists beneath the surface and it kind of shapes how you move through the world, even though it's all between my, myself and I."
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