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What people are saying about. . .
GIMME A KISS
"Shockingly funny, disturbing
and tragic ..."
(Susan
Josephs,
The Jewish Week, New York)
"Gimme a Kiss is a compelling,
moving, and often troubling
investigation of family secrets.
Lilly Rivlin's parents are a
fascinating subject and, by the
end,
the filmmaker's probing
camera yields the facts --
but not
necessarily the
answers. We are left with
haunting images rather
than
judgment."
(Annette Insdorf, Author,
"Indelible Shadows:
Film and the
Holocaust"
Director, Undergraduate Film Studies,
Columbia University)
"Very beautifully done, in Gimme A
Kiss, Lilly Rivlin exhibits
remarkable
access to her family.
It's a story about love, where
it is
and where it isn't. The filmmaker is
very skillful in noticing love
where
it doesn't appear to be."
(Albert Maysles, filmmaker)
"It seemed to me quite the most
interesting, bravest and most
complex family portrait among
the many I have seen.
It reminded
me of
Gray Gardens."
(Professor Michael Roemer,
Film Making
and American Studies,
School of Art, Yale University)
"Powerful, fascinating, engrossing,
honest, painful story of a family
betrayed by a husband and
father."
(Lucy Komisar, author)
"Brilliant moving, disturbing, thought
provoking, inspirational,
wistful, raw
-would like to see it again, and again.
It has depth, a real
tribute to the
triumph of the human spirit and the
quest for understanding (which we
never do completely) our
parents."
(Ana Freiberg )
"Gimme a Kiss starts with a journey
of discovery urged on
by the
threatened loss of a beloved parent,
and the anxious sense that
all is not
what it once seemed to be in the heart
of post-war
Jewish American family.
Lilly Rivlin takes us gently and
courageously down the road of
family secrets, exposing how love,
desire, propriety, and less tolerant
historical times conspire to
create
convenient fictions. This is a personal
narrative that
opens up brave if
disturbing questions that intersect
many family dramas."
(Faye Ginsburg, Director,
Center for Media, Culture and History,
New York University)
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"The best noir film I've ever seen "
(Amy Stone, writer)
"Gimme a Kiss was totally unique,
compelling and very
brave. "
(Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author)
"It is a powerful and compelling film."
(Nick Fraser,
Commissioning Editor,
Storyville, BBC)
"Lilly Rivlin has crafted a smart,
funny and disturbing tale of her
emotionally distant father and
the
discovery of his long history of
incessant womanizing while
wife
and mother looks on stoically...
GIMME A KISS is an
in-your-face
and up-a-little-too-close reminder
of the balancing act of
family relations."
(Alex MacKenzie, Director
Vancouver
Underground Film
Festival )
"Superb. Painful. Necessary."
(Leonard Wolf,
author)
"That was moving, I was touched -
what a family story.
I ran home to give my son a bath
and tell him I love him."
(Mark Benjamin, Director of Photography)
"...a wonderful, magnificent, sensitive,
feeling, revealing compassionate,
and above all universal piece of work...
A classic, a moving and
enduring
portrait of a family and modern
family relationships that
will touch
everyone...a real search into the
hard pieces of the soul."
(Professor Alan Rosenthal, author,
filmmaker & film critic
Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
" The film is a profoundly moving
look at issues of
family life, lifelong
struggles, and family secrets as
viewed
through Lilly's own parents
and siblings. I am still thinking of
the ways in which her painfully
open and undefended willingness
to air difficult feelings can touch
us as children, parents and
siblings
in our own lives."
(Larry Zelnick, psychologist)
"
Gimme a Kiss has layers under
layers, and each viewing alters
the
viewer. The first time seeing the
film the father is the
villain, clearly.
The second time, one sees not only
the rage of
the family but, at his
death, their tears. And the father
is such
a life-force that the picture
pales without him, and yet there he
is care-taking, who knows why?,
laughing, tickling, and, without
limbs, so physical. And his Black
mistress describe him as a friend
of the Black community and seen
as the enemy by the Whites.
Who
was he? It is, in a strange way,
a love story and a mystery.
All
honor to the film-maker
who could conquer her rage enough
to see
through the end."
(Esther M. Broner, author)
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