The Family Album

Director: Alan Berliner

Institute History

  • 1988 Sundance Film Festival

Description

The Family Album is a fascinating experimental documentary constructed from a vast collection of 16mm home movies and tape recordings from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Structured as a cycle from birth to death, The Family Album is a composite of a universal lifetime—an eerie god-like view of the ultimate home movie. For those flickering shadows on the screen (our “relatives” long since dead), Alan Berliner offers an anonymous but poetic immortality. The effect is bracing, but eloquent.

The Family Album has screened as part of Whitney’s 1987 Biennial Exhibition and won major awards at the San Francisco, American, Athens and Munich film festivals.

— Tony Safford

Screening Details

Credits

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