- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
A famous quote from Oscar Wilde says,
"Life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
In tonight's film titled Remake,
it will be hard to distinguish the two.
You will see the director can't help but blur the lines
between art and life because they are so intertwined.
Remake is a deeply personal film
about a storied filmmaker who sets out with his camera
to examine his life as a parent
and career as an award-winning filmmaker.
Throughout the film,
we'll get a look at director Ross McElwee's prolific career
and some of his films,
and grieve along with him over the loss of his son,
who we will meet through home movies.
We will also see the power of healing at work
through the documentary filmmaking process.
Ross McElwee has made ten documentaries,
one of which, Sherman's March,
won the Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986.
The film was selected for preservation
by the U.S Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000
as a historically significant motion picture.
Remake discusses his films
and reexamines his career as a documentarian
while watching him come to terms with personal tragedy.
McElwee introduces us to his young son Adrian,
who as a boy loved watching his father work
and eventually tried to follow in his footsteps as a young man,
until he succumbed to addiction
and died from a heroin overdose at the age of 27.
The origins of the movie started
when McElwee revisited his home movies.
It was so painful, he paid an assistant
to sift through them for two years
and pull various scenes from each home movie.
When he finally was able to view the footage,
Ross thought initially he could make a film
about the father-son relationship,
but still wasn't sure where the film would go
from the images alone.
But it was enough to inspire him to start the filmmaking journey.
As depressing as this all may sound,
there are moments of humor that make the film even more human
and show how McElwee has gotten through such emotional hardship.
He says if there wasn't any humor throughout,
it would be hard to watch.
From a directorial standpoint,
McElwee was already established as a filmmaker
with a host of awards and critical acclaim to his credit.
Tonight, we'll see how he uses his own voice
to narrate the story,
and it proves to be an intimate complement over his home movies,
where we see the course of Adrian's life
and the director's career.
When asked recently what he hopes people take away
from his latest work, the director says he hopes
that those who watch the film who have also lost children
find companionship.
So, let's all kick back
and watch a true artist blur the lines of art and life
in this deeply personal story,
which Ross McElwee says is a way to hold onto Adrian
and also a way to let him go.
Remake starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.