Everyone comes from somewhere.

Descent: Three Stories of Family is a film compilation where memory and reality, fact and fiction collide. Three filmmakers, employing three different stylistic approaches, explore familial relationships, personal stories and cultural traditions.

Folk Songs

LeAnn Erickson, 16mm/digital video, c. 2007, RT 12:20

In 1913 Sophia and Dimitry Makedonsky were teenagers when they left the Ukraine for the United States. Growing up in the Midwest, filmmaker LeAnn Erickson often heard stories of ‘the old country’ her grandparents had left behind.  As Erickson travels to Russia, the search for a sense of ‘place’ sparks a re- examination of her family’s immigrant past. Her own return to America sets in motion an interior journey that leads her to discover a new vision of an ‘old country’.

Images of Flying and Falling

Ariana Gerstein, 16mm/digital video, c. 2001, RT 24:00

Photographic images, moving and still, are shadows of lost people. Mourning the loss of her grandmother, Ariana Gerstein uses the only pictures she has, taken near the end of her grandmother’s life. But Martha is so much more than those images – so the filmmaker must manufacture what has been lost and cannot be told. Images of Flying and Falling is an attempt to connect and hold onto the elusive – asking the viewer – what is reality and how do we shape it in the age of personal computers?

No Man is an Island

Sonja Lindén, 16mm, c. 2006, RT 40:20

Krister Lindén has lived alone on an island for the past 16 years. His daily rituals include general caretaking, a phone call to his wife on the mainland and carpentry work on his casket. His classic jazz records and meticulous routine sustain him through the days and the seasons. Filmmaker Sonja Lindén follows her father through a year of seclusion, emerging with an intimate portrait told with humor and loving respect.

To view excerpts of the series please visit: http://www.descentseries.wordpress.com