Review by Beatrice On 20-Aug-2023
Why does a model pupil, with a superior IQ, quickly become a violent child especially with the little sister he adores and assume a rebellious, irreverent and at times irrepressible attitude?
Will it simply be a time of transition and growth or is there some mo-tive that is difficult to pinpoint?
Dad is constantly following him around with the camera, wanting to film everything about him, his sister and the whole family, including lunches with grandparents and aunts and uncles and including all vacations, vacations, commemorations in addition to the everyday. An obsession with documentation that at times annoys Sasha, who alternates between moments of protection and moments of aggression toward his sister Bekah.
The entire script of the documentary is reconstructed with real footage of an affluent Jewish family, as the children play in the garden, as they are all together at the dinner table, and as grandparents and uncles Larry and Howard show great involvement in their married brother's life.
The first image of the film is of Sasha with her chubby, restless face looking straight into the camera.
Why does the father have the camera mania? For the child and the whole family this obsession seems almost normal, but there is definitely a reason, unconscious or not, that drives the father to do this filming.
Sasha is far too rebellious, he expresses himself with aggressive language and his gestures are exaggerated...he tries to say something but does not know how to say that something he does not understand.
So he starts drawing and from the drawings everything becomes clearer.
Sasha and Bekah are victims of abuse and the pederasts are the uncles, their father's brothers; Larry and Howard to whom the children are left and with whom the mother's brothers-in-law entertain separately in their bedrooms.
The gut-wrenching physical pain that Sasha, now an adult, will recount that he experienced seems inexplicable in the eyes of a child, and he will add that he could never have imagined enduring the same pain again, but Uncle Howard "affectionately" whispered to him that if he spoke he would kill him.
Sasha's chubby, confused face accompanies his inconsolable restlessness: a few shots of his father highlight the child's troubled face as his uncle touches his shoulders, but these details become eloquent only in light of the drawings that Sasha and Bekah color in blood, until the beginning of the via crucis of the family's complaints.
How could Sasha talk if his executioners were warmly welcomed by his parents, who would believe him?
Children, who do not yet know sexuality, often confuse adults' sexual gestures with displays of affection, and adults, who thus betray children's trust, play on this misunderstanding. If children tell what happens, they are often not believed, and then they close themselves in their silence, which not infrequently drags on for the rest of their lives, with feelings of guilt and self-accusation for not having had the strength to oppose it, and thus for having been in some way complicit
But the documentary's most sensational revelation concerns the figure of the father of the two abused children, the camera maniac.
The brother of the pederasts had himself been abused as a child by his two older brothers, and this had not suggested to him, except unconsciously, to avoid the children's association with the ogre uncles. Unconsciously because perhaps his camera mania aimed at the children was a way of exorcising his attraction to them or a way of subjecting the family to a system of control.
When the removed memories resurface in adulthood, the victim often cannot cope with them, and the effects of the removal are physical, eating, and psychological disorders, the cause of which cannot be found, that subside and sometimes disappear when the victims recover their memories. This usually happens when victims feel confident enough to remember or when they become sentimentally attached to someone they trust. The process, however, is very slow and especially tiring because of the lack of trust in others as a consequence of the original betrayed trust."
However, this distressing story does not lack another detail that should not be overlooked: the older uncle, who had already compromised the childhood of his younger brother Henry Nevison, and now that of his nephew Sasha, is Howard Nevison (a surname that Sasha as an adult decides to change to that of his much-loved grandfather).
Howard Nevison is a famous baritone who had a huge responsibility in maintaining the musical heritage of New York's Emanu-El Synagogue; many liturgical works were commissioned and premiered during the synagogue's 160-plus history, and the cantor worked to ensure that this tradition was maintained.
The story goes that he was struck by the beauty of American composer Martin Kalmanoff's version of Psalm 23 and decided to pay for it by adding it to the repertoire.
Too bad that he did not hesitate to entertain morbidly with his nephews, his brother's sons, and the pictures tell how Sasha, without any fear during the trial did not hesitate to recognize precisely Uncle Howard as one of his rapists.
And the baritone who was always looking for music suited to his individual voice declared, "this wonderful version of Psalm 23 fits me like a glove," and this kind of music would be a true "Sacred Service."
Nevison's work along with Kalmanoff's and Bloch's music was dubbed the "Joy of Prayer."
Chilling and disturbing turn out to be these biographical accounts of the ogre uncle who had often been invited to sing for the pope as well. And even more unacceptable seems the fact that the opera star, after years of trials and testimony had emerged almost completely unscathed.
In psychoanalytic circles, in addition to the obvious inability to withstand an adult love relationship, there is also a narcissistic component that would be manifested in the pedophile's tendency to love, in the child, himself in the period of his own childhood, adopting the same treatment suffered or its opposite
The pedophilic subject is generally unaware that in the sexual encounter a part of his past childhood is concealed, that in that singular love encounter pieces of his own historical truth are hidden
Lacerating are the images, the questions to the mother, the father, the children, from psychologists, from the police.
Even more intrusive is reliving for Sasha now an adult, all the footage and retracing the bewilderment of his violated childhood. But the directing of this documentary becomes a psychoanalytic/cathartic journey for him especially because the intrusiveness of the images obsessively filmed by his father seem to have been unconsciously shot to have a witness, infallible, at least this time.
And only the determination of the child Sasha will lead him to point out at trial his abusers and provoke their, if ever sufficient, conviction.
Rewind the tape of life and process it to build a battle, this one: http://www.voiceforthekids.com/sashas-story
Sasha Joseph Neulinger is a survivor.
Through this shocking document he confronts the viewer with the darkness of deviant relationships fueled by some families and the darker sides of the human soul.
It is all true what is seen in these images, and even more true is the trauma, the physical and psychic pain that the two innocent children may have experienced.
Statistics provided by theAmerican Journal of Preventative Medicine show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men have experienced an unwanted sexual encounter before the age of 18, and considering that not everyone chooses to share their experience, there is no telling how many adults remain damaged and isolated as a result of these experiences.
It is difficult to better document the complexities and enormity of the problem explored here in its multi-generational nature as well as through the devastation that abuse causes to children and entire families.
A documentary that hurts to the limit of bearability, yet as necessary and inescapable as these pressing words from Sasha:
"I got to observe my childhood with a certain level of objectivity. It was the first time that I could cognitively accept that I was beautiful and lovable. In watching myself grow up, I got to reexperience and reclaim some of the most beautiful moments of my life ... moments that I had completely forgotten about be-cause they had been overshadowed by the painful ones."
"I can't change the past and I can't control what happens around me, I can only choose how I show up in the present moment of my life."
- Sasha Joseph Neulinger
20-Aug-2023 by Beatrice