STYLE

FAMILY SECRET will be built on the style I have used in my past works, most notably BLIND LIGHT (1998) and BROKEN MEAT (1990). Both films are adventurous works which challenge the common definition of documentary and fiction in a search for truth. BROKEN MEAT evokes the life of beat writer Alan Granville in a confrontational style full of black humor, giving the feeling of a "movie" much more than a documentary. BLIND LIGHT combines my own personal story of trying to capture a moment of enlightenment with a documentary investigation of the personality of Axel Munthe, a Swedish writer from early in the century. The personal and biographical threads are combined with a fictional story of an American photographer's epiphany in Munthe's Italian villa.

Like BLIND LIGHT, this new film will use the diaries and letters of the main characters as narrative voices, bringing the audience into the emotional core of the story. I plan to use archival footage in FAMILY SECRET in a poetic way, similar to the way in which I used it in my supporting works, to express the inner psychological states of the protagonists.

The structure of FAMILY SECRET will alternate present and past. Cinema-verite scenes which are set up in a fictional style will interweave with a personal narration of events from the past, set against a back-drop of evocative locations that are central to the events and relationships in our parents' lives in Paris, Bucharest and New York. The reading of letters from the past will provide exposition of the growing secret of Pierre's existence, while simultaneously serving as ammunition as it reveals subtler levels of emotional truth. Color scenes will segue into stark black and white which will deliver us into the time and landscape of the 1950's and early '60's. I will use sixteen millimeter film footage to capture tableau-style scenes, transcending out of the more common visual style used in the documentary, while I plan to use digital video with its more unobtrusive cameras to cover a wider range of interactions among the characters.