Nobody's Business

Alan Berliner's 1996 documentary takes his own father as its subject. Oscar Berliner says he has no life worth telling and refuses to sit for the camera; the film is built on exactly that resistance. The structure is an argument. The son asks, the father deflects or grows angry; family albums, old home movies and immigration records are cut in. The more Berliner researches the family line, the more the details his father calls unimportant turn into a history. The editing is deliberately combative. Boxing footage and repeated sounds are inserted; the documentary shows its own method and leaves the father's objections uncensored. Who it's for: those who like personal documentary and films about family memory. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a harmonious father and son portrait; the two never agree across the film.