Oprah Winfrey supported this appropriately rough-edged confessional, a first-person inquiry into incest/abuse that sometimes mirrors the literature of Alice Walker or Maya Angelou and is sort of an African-American counterpart to Capturing the Friedmans. Filming over five years, producer-director Chico David Colvard grips the viewer at the outset by recounting a childhood day in Kentucky in 1978 when he accidentally shot and badly wounded his sister Paula with the automatic rifle owned by his Vietnam-vet father, Elijah. But worse was yet to come; police arrested the elder Colvard when the little daughters in the home were found to have been repeatedly abused and raped. Cut to a recent Thanksgiving reunion, where Elijah, aged and ailing, is welcome and the three victimized sisters maintain their relationship with him despite psychic (and in Paula's case, physical) agonies. Blame instead falls on their estranged mother, a white German immigrant who fled Elijah's fists and is now a distant shadow, mailing the women unwanted Bibles along with entreaties to repent. Colvard interviews all sides in this family album of pain, love, and (incomplete) healing, although he cuts short the rationalizations of Elijah, who remains a monstrous enigma, unapologetic to the last. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)
Family Affair
(2010) 82 min. DVD: $20: individuals; $295 (w/PPR): institutions. C-Line Films. Volume 26, Issue 2
Family Affair
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