Stood for the Storm in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina paints an in depth portrait of the matriarch of a small family. She’s Mama Sue, a gutsy working class woman who “stood for the storm,” living on her roof for three days, without food or water, wondering whether she’d survive.
A longitudinal film, it was shot over a period of four years and so gradually we come to understand Mama Sue’s struggles as well as her occasional joys, as she tries to rebuild and recover, always asking the question, ‘does one ever really recover?’
The film also takes in the wider community, where more than half of the homes remained vacant, mold-ridden messes, eventually succumbing to the wrecking ball. The wielders of power in this parish — which has a history of virulent racism — tried to steer the post-storm use of land and property in certain directions, and passed laws to encourage poorer and non-white residents to leave. [Sue is white] Thus this film joins in the conversation about what a major disaster means for someone like Sue, a woman who stands for the storm — a member of the non-elite who remains in her home and chooses to rebuild.
Without Apology (73 min) , is a personal documentary about the filmmaker’s family, centering the life of her brother, Alan, born with autism and who never learned to speak.
In the course of making the film, Hamovitch uncovers the cruel theories and systems of care that the family was quickly subsumed by, including the psychiatric field’s “refrigerator mother” theory which blamed mothers for their childrens’ autism. And within a few years their family was introduced to a sprawling system of institutionalization Millions of people with Developmental Disabilities over the years were sequestered in the countryside of most of the 50 states, Alan being among them. And simultaneously, Hamovitch’s family learned that there was little acceptance and tolerance in the country at the time for this population
They also absorbed the message that their neuro-atypical family member was simply shameful, a fact to be concealed. But change gradually occurred and Without Apology charts the revolutions in philosophy, political policy and social attitudes that took place in the United States during the first 40 years of Alan’s life. which a beat later found their reflection in the Hamovitch’s family’s own changing attitudes. Ms. Hamovitch concludes her film with a scene of her taking her brother to an ice cream parlor, ordering a sundae for him, a simply outing which would have been inconceivable only a few years prior. He can be seen in public, the voice over says, “without apology.”
3Conversations in April is an experimental short that attempts to capture a moment in time and place during the coronavirus pandemic.
The film is the series of recordings made of the first phone calls I ever made to my brother, a man with autism and severe cognitive disabilities, and a sweet and patient disposition. I placed twice daily calls to my brother, Alan, after he was diagnosed with Covid19 and relocated to his bedroom, in complete isolation. My brother is now well into his senior years, pushing 70. But as I gave him ever cheerier pep talks from my apartment in Brooklyn, I couldn’t know whether he would be able to grasp who it was that was speaking — whether it was his sister, whose voice he was hearing at the other end of the phone for the first time.
Meanwhile, the viewer will watch as darker themes emerge — the series of illogical and unfeeling policy decisions made by a system that governs the care of those with intellectual disabilities, the worried lives of the staff who work in the homes. Through a steady interspersing of titles and reenactments, the film gradually reveals some unsettling realities. There are perhaps multiple reasons why you’ll see me quietly pacing in my own self-isolating space.
