A sharp yet understanding guide to high-quality documentation of family history that proceeds with heart, logic and...
A how-to guide based on the idea that recorded narratives from elders are of long-lasting value to the children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews who will outlive their family’s great storytellers.
Sargent-Hamill’s credentials (a bachelor’s degree in gerontology) and her practice as an independent filmmaker manifest in her heart-and-mind approach to shooting a dynamic video interview. While she relays personal anecdotes of how meaningful these late-in-life documentaries have proven to be, the author also discusses practical matters—such as headroom and symmetrical balance of a shot—that even the best-intentioned amateur videographer may not consider. Structurally, the information in the “Develop the Concept” chapter that opens Section 2 (“Things to Consider Before You Begin) would be more useful if it preceded, or was woven into, Section 1, which is concerned solely with project development. The rest of the book, however, benefits from a smooth, resourceful organization of ideas and exercises. The “Evaluate Your Electronic Equipment” section is thorough while managing to abide by simple terminology that even those aloof to digital technology will comprehend. Sargent-Hamill takes into account many before-the-interview details in a streamlined manner with details such as addressing personal discomfort of interviewees and checking the interview site for the best seating arrangement respective of a pleasant but not overwhelming background, finding ideal lighting and unobtrusive ambient noise, etc. While she provides examples of specific questions to ask, along with a sample genealogy-based interview outline, she also recommends preinterview chats to obtain the nitty-gritty information that can shape, or at least fine-tune, the interview structure. The book also covers supplementary or substitute methods of chronicling loved ones’ lives—photo journaling, exploring community archives and interviewing those whose lives were impacted for the better by the documentary subjects. Near the end of her book, Sargent-Hamill offers some basic tips on editing, pointing readers in the direction of medium-specific resource guides.
A sharp yet understanding guide to high-quality documentation of family history that proceeds with heart, logic and efficiency.Pub Date: June 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1439271162
Page Count: 133
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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