STEP 1: How did I get here from there?

The only movie I can remember seeing as a child was Oklahoma! We had 2 theaters in my home town: one always played a Western, the other a Disney animation. My parents thought of movies, or at least these movies, as junk food for the mind. We read books.

I was introduced to good films at the university cinema, where a cinephile friend from NYC took me once in a while. Once I moved to Milwaukee I learned about the art house theaters here and would go occasionally, taking my sleeping child, for a single parent’s night on the town.

My son always loved stories – Greek myths, science fiction – but he never was interested in photography or videography. Imagine my surprise – and that of his grandparents – when he announced the his grad study path of choice was film school! It was a hard choice to understand; his grandparents worried that he’d be poor, and I, a social activist and educator, worried that he wasn’t going to contribute positively to society.

Not to worry: the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My son, Aaron Greer, became an academic (teaching film production) and began making independent films that touch on social issues with the nuance and subtlety of observation and wit that are some of his unique gifts.

I came to understand film as the literature of his generation and began to see lots of movies in order to learn about his chosen profession. (I also have striven mightily to understand football, another of his passions.) And then, about five years ago… (see my next post)

~ by Fran Kaplan on July 19, 2008.