Sandy
Video Essays
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Documentary, 17-May-2019
“Sandy” journeys through a New Jersey beachside town with no sense of the past as sea levels rise. Our take: This personal essay film by Dylan Hansen-Fliedner is a contemplative survey of family history, climate change, Hollywood hypocrisy, and our culture’s unwillingness to change its ways. Visually formatted as a collage, freely mixing evocative 16mm footage of decimated New Jersey shorelines (being rebuilt on stilts), clips from disaster movies like “Deep Impact,” and “Titanic,” and old family photos from Hansen-Fliedner’s native Norway. Stories of his grandfather resisting the Nazis and fleeing to America prompts a connection to now, a seething argument that fascism is on the rise in tandem with the destruction of our environment, a refusal to listen to our past, or not caring enough to do anything about it. At one point, if you looked closely on Google Maps, you would see Hansen-Fliedner’s family home close to the New Jersey shore before Hurricane Sandy destroyed it, but if you zoomed out to a wider view, you would instead see the mansion that quickly replaced it. The sense of bitterness, frustration and hopelessness is valid but the intent is not to describe solutions (read more here in our interview with Hansen-Fliedner) as much as it is to paint a picture of that frustration and hopelessness. “I can hear your voice, but I can’t pick up what you’re saying.” Director/Editor: Dylan Hansen-Fliedner. Cinematographer: Kenny Suleimanagich. Score: Jay Jadick. Re-recording Mix: Tom Ciccone. Cast: Norman Hansen, Vesla Hansen, Dan Colanduno, Oddvar Tornes, Dylan Hansen-Fliedner.
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