L'Amour 2

This is a short film I made in 1989 about the process of my father Piero Paci’s death from pancreatic cancer. While he was dying I shot a lot of video — VHS, by the way, we’re talking old school! — of him, and recorded him on audio tape, and shot lots of photos. He didn’t want to be recorded at this stage of his life. I did it anyway, for better or worse. I then transferred this video footage to film by shooting it off a tv monitor with a 16mm non-sync camera on b&w stock. Then I edited the material, laying down audio from family discussions between my parents and us kids and family friends, and phone calls between my father and his parents in Italy. Jimi Hendrix’ “Are You Experienced?” was completely appropriate to what I felt at the time — not for its obvious implications but for an entirely different, but in some ways similar, type of experience — coming face to face with death. L’Amour 2 was the beginning of my work as a filmmaker and was the seed for subject matter of my later feature film Searching for Paradise. Shown on WNYC-TV/Channel 13, March 1993 (7 min).