The film was inspired by a 1976 audio recording of a séance with Charlotte Brontë, of which the film makes ample use. But the séance audio is merely the tip of the affective iceberg as its heroine turns out to have an emotional – not to mention intellectual – life of epic proportions. Her searing letters – another primary element in the video – throw the eerie platitudes of the séance into razor-sharp relief and disclose a 19th Century woman whose brief life was both an artistic triumph and a relentless battle against grief, loss, and despair. Her dark moments--confided in her letters – drove the film far beyond the initial ambitions of its makers. CB uses footage from a 1947 Hollywood production of Jane Eyre – co-starring a very young Elizabeth Taylor (un-credited) – to augment enactments of scenes inspired by the ambiguous nature – both conversation with the dead and univocal performance – of the séance audio.