Dangermond.org

After hanging door flyers for the Re-Bridge project, we all met back at Swirl and then T and I went over to the Fair Grinds to watch another film sponsored by the New Orleans Afrikan Film Fest, this one The Prodigal Sons, which was really so good that I wish it had a wider distribution so that you could see it too. There is a trailer on the NOA Fest site.

It made me think about a lot of things the first is which the compassion this filmmaker had towards her very disturbed brother. And it made me think of my family to say the least and how birth order matters. I was flipping through our family album once again thinking of tackling the digitization of it (albeit scanner isn’t working correctly) and I noticed how quickly I came around after my sister was born. 14 months later. Just as she was getting used to all the attention I came along. We were almost Irish twins. Similarly this family adopted a boy and 11 months later had a boy and the adopted child always felt like he was robbed of his chance.

He also felt abandoned and wanted so desperately to know his family and I thought of my Tin and how I hope that he grows up with a fine sense of himself and does not feel abandoned or bewildered by the twists and turns his life has taken and might take. We spoke with the filmmaker afterwards, an attractive woman who was a handsome man before she transitioned. I told her that I applauded the compassion she showed her brother and she said she was glad that came across. I said I had an equally disturbing relationship with my sibling but I felt it better to exit than stay around and take the abuse.

She said well my mother was also compassionate. And I said well so was I, but isn’t that the role of the mother to want all her children to be healthy and happy and that isn’t so much the role of a sibling.

This was a powerful story, well told and not the least of which has a compelling twist when the adopted son learns he is the grandchild of Orson Wells and Rita Hayworth. If you find it on Netflix – which I don’t know if it would be there – watch it. It’s a tale to be told about living with mental illness in the family.

One thing that happened to the boy was a head injury which the filmmaker said fossilized all of the negative in him, and I thought similarly that it was after the accident that my sibling began to hold onto all that was negative and wrong in the world and had let go of all the light. So sad. But the story this filmmaker tells is one of continuous redemption and how the family cannot remain stuck in the past but it must continually be reinvented as all the members change. Powerful message.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 9th, 2011 at 8:36 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.