Dad’s Stick

How do we remember the people who have shaped our lives, and how do we come to terms with the fact that every act of remembrance inevitably trims and condenses the past, subjecting it to our own personal system of categories? In this film, John Smith turns his attention to three everyday objects that, he suggests, reveal the essence of his late father. Yet John Smith would not be John Smith if he did not simultaneously challenge this very staging of artifacts. With meticulous attention to detail and the calm assurance of an artist who knows how to spark a process of thought in the viewer’s mind, he gently works against the grain of his own narrative—showing not merely what such a process might look like on screen, but setting it in motion.