My movie is a brief biography about my father's father; my grandfather I never knew, yet have been told my entire life how much alike we are.
My father has been ill lately and I wanted to take this wonderful opportunity to pull information from him about my grandfather, and through the dadaist tradition allow any information to begin flowing into the ocean of chance. I also wanted this story to be a gift to my two sisters as well because they too know next to nothing about our grandfather apart from the scattered wild stories we heard while growing up. I hope my family and anyone willing to see it will take a feeling that even if we do not know our ancestors, or our non-blood family, a great feeling of connectedness can cross the waves of history to our own shores, rocky as they may be.
I believe that stories such as mine can be used to show the interconnectedness, the weaving of humanity, happens whether we like it or not. I am an artist as well as a bona fide historian (Phi Alpha Theta honors and everything) and in being so I have always understood the importance of history, be it geopolitical or personal; and of course the true historian sees the total connection of the two. Educators can do similar movies, or use mine as an example, to see how the personal is political; my grandfathers abuse from poor on poor violence, the exploitation of labor, the culture of spectacle and with it the “escapism” rendered upon the working classes.