Feature , Drama
21 min.
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| In 1986 President Kennedy's niece married the Terminator in Hyannis,Massachussetts. That same year, 6 months before Independence Day, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 5 miles above Cape Canaveral. In March of that year a terrorist attack in a West Berlin Disco killed a single American soldier which Ronald Reagan took as a sign to attack Libya in what becam the largest single U.S. air strike since World War II. One month later, in April, the Ukrainian nuclear power plant at Chernobyl erupted in a full scale meltdown. July 4th the Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island celebrated its 100th birthday and, one week later the filmmaker's only living uncle, Sam, came to visit his family. Uncle Sam and his wife Marylin were returning from a trip to Isreal and stopped in Connecticut to visit the film maker's family on their way back to their home in Jacksonville, Florida. The trip to Israel seemed odd to the film maker in terms of the global-political-climate and the recent attack on Libya. So, Bryan (the film maker) asked his mother why his uncle had taken such a trip. His mother's response was simply that Uncle Sam was Jewish. Uncle Sam was Bryan's father's brother which led Bryan to realize that, indeed, his father was Jewish as well. This information had never been talked about in the family. For Bryan this was a minor epiphany that changed his world... He learned that his father's family had immigrated from the Ukraine and settled in Chicago where intense anti-semitism caused the family to practice their religious beliefs in secret. This video takes a wry look at the complex relationship between information and knowledge as seen through this film maker's own diaristic consideration of family stories, family secrets, and family history. Some people talk too little, some too much. Some are inquisitive and some just plain nosy. How can a generation that survived World War II be so optimistic and forward looking? Perhaps denial of a past they would rather forget. And what is it about the millenium that repents such apocalyptic visions of finality and doom. A need to look back. What good does looking back do anyway? Does it really make us any less murderous? To be free of meaning and significance, and surround yourself with seven funny friends, always... |
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