MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH

Q&A with director Morgan Dews

Co-presented by the Hamptons International Film Festival. Here’s the description from the fest catalog:

MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH is a documentary about documentation. Allis and Charley, a highly unconventional couple raising four children in the 1960s, made over two hundred home movies, transcribed their telephone conversations and tape recorded many hours of self and family analysis. Morgan Dews has taken all these primary sources and crafted a suspenseful film about the fate of a highly conflicted, nonconformist American family. Individual, family and group therapies offered little or no solace to the subjects of the film, whose poignant tale is told through technically stylish editing and minimal, unobtrusive narrative. The self-proclaimed free as air couple experimented with open marriage and refused to be hypocritical, so their attempt to find conventional happiness in Hartford, Connecticut seemed doomed from the outset. It is the fate of the children that is most compelling and informative in this story of miscommunication that embodies both the ideals and tragedies of a generation. MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH confronts its protagonist’s essential dilemma, I don’t know what happened, we were such a happy family, leaving viewers to ponder what constitutes contentment and what is the nature of familial responsibility.—Geoffrey Paul Gordon

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