Dearest frameworkers: My father passed away a couple weeks ago, and during the service last week a video of him was shown. It had been shot within the last year, and it reminded me of a work I made on him 12 years ago: Death of a Maniac I don't even list as among my works in film or video (it incorporates both formats).
For some years I had been showing Mindy Faber's video on her mother, Delirium, to various students (screen studies or ethics). This was an important reference for me, when I made Death of a Maniac, and in each case there is the question of mental illness (think Foucault and Freud). At the service I saw my mother, who is almost 90. She said she showed the DVD I made of my father to a long-standing friend of hers, someone with a background in theater. Olga objected to the work. It is a cruel video. Who would know that I showed it to my father shortly after I made it, and seeing it prompted him to write an apology to another son. Who would know why someone would make such a video about a parent? I remember reading a published exchange between Faber and Sandi DuBowski, who made a video about his grandmother before she passed away (Tomboychick). Each had permitted or encouraged the parent to turn the camera back onto them. I believe they each had seen the parent die who they had worked together with for the video. But in my case, the father never handles the camera. The maniac is a natural clown. Where would we find such a list of works, frameworkers, of works that address an ambivalence toward a parent who will soon die? Would this constitute something more difficult to program than an homage to a film artist who never asked questions in film? Thus we have to announce a certain difference in priorities, in what success looks like perhaps. Bernie
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