Mother and Daughter Soap Opera

Wendy Clarke's videos frequently feature unscripted dialogue, inviting speakers to create a video diary or to share their thoughts on a topic, such as love. This approach often results in sincere and honest portraits of the speakers. In Mother and Daughter Soap Opera, Wendy focuses her video diary on her relationship with her mother, Shirley Clarke. Both women set up a camera at their respective homes and recorded their end of a phone conversation between them: Wendy in New York City and Shirley in Los Angeles at the time. In the conversation, Wendy and Shirley talk candidly about creating art, love and relationships, friendship, and the different ways each artist engages with the world.

The videos for Mother and Daughter Soap Opera were filmed in 1977. In 2024, the videos were digitized by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison, Wisconsin and then later edited into a single composite video.