ties that bind:
the most resonant part of this movie was the footage of “work will set you free.”
the filmmaker managed to give new meaning to this familiar nazi phrase.
since the filmmaker’s mother (the subject of the film) worked as a typist for BOTH
the nazis (oppressors) and the americans (who later “liberated” germany).
as a result of her work as a typist, she met her husband who supposedly set her free
her husband, however, left her after 15 years of marriage.
the footage of her mother at the beach (which we later find out is a lake) was confusing for me.
i began thinking that perhaps her mother would swim out and never come back.
this was confirmed to be a thought her mother had at least once.
when her mother began crying , i equated the ocean/lake/body of water to a sea of tears.
suddenly, at the moment of this writing, her tears become the tears of all non-jewish anti-nazi germans.
bontoc eulogy :
the filmmaker used an interesting combination of re-enactment and archival footage.
in his reenactment scenes, he constructs the recording of voices on a gramaphone, (though there was one scene i had a question about).
the film began as a question of memory – who remembers what and why
he includes his children in the film.
by the end of the film, we look to his children to carry on this search for phillipino identity and ancestry.
the search for his grandfather was particularly haunting.
the filmmaker, marlon fuentes , describes the world’s fair in great detail.
while it may seem at first to be an ethnographic film,
it becomes an interesting analysis and examination of ethnographic film
with its inclusion of bare chested female “natives” and still photographs.
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