Deschutes Public Library

Nana, Mom and Me

videorecording

Nana, Mom and Me

921963208

Originally produced by New Day Films in 1974

48

Using photographs, old home movies and direct interviews Amalie R. Rothschild explores the mother-daughter ties in 3 generations of her own family and in the process explores the classic female problem faced by her artist mother: the conflict between work and children--the necessary compromises, the incumbent anxieties. The structure is intentionally loose and open-ended, like a good conversation, emphasizing the need to ask the right questions rather than give pat answers. "The Bicentennial Heritage Program yielded a large number of films based on local family histories; old photographs and family movies were mined, and documentary techniques were employed. As is so often the case when films are made for some ulterior purpose-in this case, reestablishing a sense of the past-most of them were of little intrinsic interest, but Nana, Mom and Me, made by a gifted filmmaker, is an exception. It is a very simple but moving account of three generations of women, held together by recorded narrative and an emotion so intense that sophisticated audiences become still and contemplative as they watch it. A film about filming, it shares with the thousands of novels in which the hero is a writer, a peculiar quality of verisimilitude which goes beyond the semi-authenticity of the documentary style into real creativity." - Margaret Mead, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST JOURNAL

live action