New to DVD this week: PAPIROSEN
Gastón Solnicki’s generational portrait of his family debuted at Locarno in 2011. Other screenings have included Thessaloniki Doc, Rotterdam, BAFICI, Edinburgh, Jerusalem, San Sebastian, Jeonju, and the New York and San Francisco Jewish fests.
Solnicki captures four generations of his argumentative Argentine-Jewish family over more than fifty years. While most of the footage is his own, stemming from about ten years of recording, the director also mixes in Super 8 shot by other family members that goes back much further. Presented in an often jumbled manner, moving back and forth through time, the cacophony can overwhelm at times. Still, Solnicki’s intimate profile also forces the viewer into the role of silent witness, privy to the tortured imprint the Holocaust has left on his entire clan, from those who made the initial journey from Poland to Argentina in the 1940s, to their offspring who grew up feeling the consequences of this exodus: anger, sadness, and seemingly perpetual dissatisfaction.
what (not) to doc 