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It happens that Doug Block is a documentary filmmaker whose last film, "Home Page", explored online journals and relationships before anybody had ever heard the word "blog." He also shoots weddings, where he catches the first moments and mysteries of nuclear family relationships, experience that he leverages for this latest film. Doug and I met when he was screening "Home Page" in San Francisco, at a Web '98 screening, and later in Austin at SXSW Interactive '99. He's a bright, curious, garrulous guy, a devoted husband and father, the kind of guy who comes from a solid loving home. After watching "51 Birch Street", I can see that he came from a loving home, but a home that appeared more solid than was the case. Doug approaches his parents' story as the mystery it was, for him. The question was, after his mother died, why his father rather quickly announced his intention to marry his secretary of 35 years past and move to Florida. This leads to other questions, and Doug skillfully documents the pursuit of the answers so that the revelation opens doors for all of us. (In fact, I was tearful at the end, and that never happens.) Doug is screening "51 Birch Street" at SXSW Interactive. I strongly recommend the film, especially for boomers, since I think it's most relevant to those of us whose parents lived through the depression and WWII and raised their kids - my generation - through the 50s and 60s. I think many or most of them concealed their inner lives, sometimes even from themselves, while the kids (that would be us) made assumptions about reality that owed more to our safe consumption of media, especially television, than to our perception of the less palatable real world. This film's power owes much to the fact that Doug had been filming his family for years, and partly to his mother's extensive documentation of her thoughts in a huge pile of notebooks (there are scenes where Doug and his siblings wonder whether, by reading her private notebooks, they're somehow intruding.) There will be three screenings of "51 Birch Street" during SXSW Interactive:
Doug's father and his wife Kitty will be in Austin for Q&A's after the first two screenings. Says Doug, "People were floored when they spoke after our showings in Toronto and Amsterdam. Especially me!" Doug will also be on the "Blogging About Film" panel on Monday the 13th at 3pm. jon posted this at 11:20 AM |
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