Adam Ol´ha: New Life of a Family Album
It is a bit difficult for me to verbalise precisely, what this film is about. It goes in many directions and I have to confess that I sometimes lackd a focus while watching. However, the reason you stay with the film is the tone and the footage available for the male director, family archive footage shot by his father over a period of almost 20 years. I write male as the director is the only male in the family with mother, grandmother and 5 sisters! The Man with the Moving Camera he calls his father in the beginning of the film, or the father calls himself so, ending up giving himself the same characteristic as the one, who is never really involved, always on a distance, always observing. We dont get to know a lot about the son, the one making the film – and we don’t get to know much about the father, who left the family to marry another woman. Why? He does not talk about it.
On the contrary when it comes to the females in the film, they are open-minded, when they talk. The mother, a famous actress, the grandmother with her photos, talking about her good looking husband, who had many affairs, and the daughters, who grow up looking for their own way of life.
The material is impressive. The father took pictures – he even made an exhibition about the Ol´ha family – and the mother acted. As she says, now with parts as either a mother or a prostitute. We see her in close-ups and we see a lot of photos and the super 8mm footage of a happy family. The sunflower sequence in the beginning of the film is gorgeous. The happy family that was apparently not so happy. Suddenly the father was not there any longer and the son felt he had to ”rewrite history”. The father who, when young in the photos, looked fresh and optimistic is now closed and reluctant to answer the questions from the son. Who never dares to ask the question – why did you leave us, your big family?
A few words about the tone of a film that has many loveable moments, difficult not to fall in love with the little girl – the youngest daughter – who in songs/rappings comment on the new interpretation of a family without a father. Maybe a bit confusing structure but seldom a dull moment.
Slovakia/Czech Republic, 2012, 80 mins.
