Last Thoughts

The off-screen narrator’s voice is that of Robert Henry, the grandfather of the film’s maker, who died 15 years ago. As a kind of last will and testament, he left his life story behind on a sound tape that was kept by the family.
Grandfather had a hard and unsettled life in rural Oklahoma in the Great Depression and is obviously able to talk about this in an entertaining way. Travelling in a camper, the grandson sought pictures to match with his 16mm camera. In this way, the film has become a beautiful example of oral history of the working classes of America and also a beautiful visual document about the changing and partly neglected countryside. A narrative photo book in moving images. As unpolished as the rough land itself. The sound is authentic and the restrictions of technology have not been hidden, as a result of which the truth, warts and all, wins in credibility.
The film was shot on Super-16 format and seems to differ a little from the ordinary 16mm films in this programme. Super-16 is generally only used when a final copy is envisaged on 35mm and is therefore used more for feature films than for documentaries, which are hardly ever shot on film any more anyway. But Henry’s approach, with his personal, poetic and agile camera, is exactly like that of the other 16mm film makers. (GjZ)

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