Directed by Alan Berliner • 1991 • United States
Cinematic essayist Alan Berliner carves a poetic and emotional jigsaw puzzle out of the voluminous memorabilia of his grandfather’s remarkable life story. Family members try to make sense of an enigmatic man who was at once ordinary and endlessly fascinating: Joseph Cassuto, a Palestinian Jew raised in Egypt who settled in Brooklyn—but whose “true” home was Japan, a country he loved so fervently that he ultimately all but abandoned his own family for it.
Directed by Alan Berliner • 1996 • United States
Alan Berliner takes on his own reclusive father as the reluctant subject of this poignant and graceful study of family history and memory. Finding both humor and pathos in the swirl of conflicts and affections that bind father and son, Berliner cr...
Directed by Alan Berliner • 2001 • United States
What’s in a name? In THE SWEETEST SOUND, Alan Berliner (specifically the filmmaker from New York) is tired of being mistaken for people who share his name and decides to rid himself of the dreaded Same-Name Syndrome. His solution: invite all the A...