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First, the Recap:
What’s in a name? A question that has been heard countless times over ages of human existence as a means by which to try and define exactly how one’s given moniker might hold the key to understanding heritage, history, ancestry, family, and legacy. But how do we truly go about ascertaining the value placed upon our identity when sometimes the ways to do so aren’t clear, or are clouded by not fully being made aware of what resources we might seek to create the foundation of our enlightenment. Does it fall to finding a more–obscure–yet no less impactful path by plumbing the depths of our own minds and experiences to formulate a picture that hence yields the answers we seek? Is this facsimile of reality allowing us to find the resolution through others we are tied to in order to discover the precise meanings of that question posed again–what’s in a name?
Next, my Mind:
That may sound quite indeterminate or non-linear to describe in this manner the thematic direction intended, at least in this critic’s interpretation, through this 7-minute short film effort from writer/director/producer/editor Irit Reinheimer and producer/DP Lindsey Martin that screened at the 2nd Annual 2019 Berlin Illambra Experimental Film Festival held at Salon AM Moritzplatz and hosted by Illambra, but quite frankly, is this not the entire point of indie/experimental cinema to present concepts in a more perplexing way on the surface instead of realizing its actual ambitions right from the start? I’d like to think so, anyway. Here, Reinheimer chooses a unique, unconventional road less traveled to express her interest and journey to find her family background via a conjectural and abstract “love letter to the great grandmother she’s not quite named after”, delivered with an underlying fervency that gives due credit to the worth and merit of her origins.
Utilizing imagery that has been compiled together from a multitude of resources in order to make the grander scope of this quest for acknowledging one’s namesake evident and engaging, Reinheimer’s film takes on an almost biographical documentary tone and pacing while spanning a myriad of countries and events that piece together the story of a family who shares much, loves a lot, yet finds itself fractured as well through war, politics, ethnicity, and other elements that influence who they have been molded into. Collages of old pictures, newspaper clippings, home movies, and projected images filled with personal meaning and objective while still speaking to us as the viewer when it comes to the essence, the substance which Reinheimer desires us to feel and experience through such private musings made known to the world. Clever cinematography enhances one particular sequence involving a phone call, the phone on which it is envisioned to be on made more real in purpose by broadcast images placed on it.
It all speaks to our inherent, even if so often unresearched, unrecognized, or unacknowledged, fascination with our lineages, or own beginnings, and this critic feels a film such as this, with all its quirks and unorthodox approaches to visualizing such an undertaking, might end up sparking that dormant curiosity in us, spurring us onward to seek our own family trees and associated chronicles which could reveal previously unknown facets of who we are. Perhaps we all just need to grasp onto the importance of connecting with ourselves and the factors that have made us into the people who we’ve become in order to better progress forward and have something intangible yet fully immersive and noteworthy to pass along to those who come after us. For me, this film certainly reminds us that we’re only mortal, and that in this short overall time we have on this planet, maybe it’s best not to let our lives just slip away without having explored all that is to be learned, good and bad, about family as Reinheimer has done so eloquently here.
In total, “Of Origins, Part 2: Emma” is an interesting, mildly peculiar, but worthwhile short film effort that certainly lets its experimental nature run free, but does so in a way that should cause us to think more about what it teaches, apply it, and move ahead with a more purposeful sense of the bonds that are family and the power found in the names we’ve so, I hope, proudly inherited.
As always, this is all for your consideration and comment. Until next time, thank you for reading!
