Himself
The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
This documentary shows what happened when Alzheimer’s came into my mother’s life and how we managed it. What started as a private memorial video for Mom found a new life in its current metamorphosis as a possible motivator for others to consider home care for their parents instead of automatically going the nursing home route.
The documentary is titled after Arkadaş Z. Özger’s poem “Hello My Dear” which had caused much controversy in the period it was first published. Considered to be in defiance of heteronormativity, the said poem includes references to the poet’s personality, his family, his relationship to the society, and his “unexpected” death, which came three years after its publication. Today, 50 years after it was written, the documentary follows these same lines in the poem utilising cinematic elements. The documentary also rediscovers the poetics; reaches out to the family, the comrades, the friendships, departing from the official historical accounts, cognizant of his experience of otherness, in pursuit of the “lost” portrait of Arkadaş Z. Özger.
With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
The son can't stop wondering. What is dad going to do after retirement? So he starts filming him. Dad wants to have a shot at becoming a street artist in Montmartre, Paris, a longtime dream of his. To the mother, it sounds like just another absurd dream. Anyhow, 2 years later, the father puts his plan into action and sets off for France. Right until his departure, the mother doesn't know what to make of it. While dad spends one month as a street artist, the son and mother follow him to Paris...
