Least of These Trailer

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Produced by The Theorists
Featuring Bille and Twain Morrow with Daniel Martinez
Original Music by Dana Louise

From the Director:
Last Tuesday at age 93, my Granddad, Twain Morrow, recited on analog magnetic tape, a verse his father used to quote him when he was a little boy, “Backward, turn backward O Time in your flight; make me a child again just for tonight.” Granddad survived the Great Depression, WWII, three heart attacks, outlived all of his kin and even his pacemaker battery. His father might have only had a childhood education, but he taught him he wasn’t a quitter. “Draw on your grit, it’s so easy to quit. It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.” He came out of surgery this week, remarkably without anesthesia, reciting the last line of the poem, “give it one more try, it’s easy to die. It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.” My Granddad has always been my best pal and I can’t remember a time in my life where we didn’t indulge in the family tradition of kicking around the mic to record our conversations while dancing. The audio you hear comes from the streets of East Jerusalem, the mountains of México, and back at home in our living room.

My early memories as a child were when Granddad returned to Texas from a trip to Israel. I later learned he had just survived the first of three heart attacks and second of two divorces. Yes, he reunited with my Grandmother three times. They are stubborn in the head but soft in the heart and still together after 65 years. As a toddler, my parents went abroad to visit my Uncle who moved to Toluca, México. I spent my days with Granddad. Collect calls were expensive, so to save a dime, we passed the time recording cassettes we would snail mail. The first order of business to ensure good sound quality, naturally, was the taking off of the shoes. I’m a modern dancer and Granddad’s a country boy. We roll barefoot.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering about the film, precisely the opening shot with hundreds of Gammas sprawled across the floor. What do the balls represent? Out of all our family recordings, there are too many stories to tell. What caught my eye was actually the range of our emotions is such a small size. It’s the little things in life that mean so much. It’s the magic in the mundane or how grand it is to feel so small. “O time in your flight, make me a child again just for tonight.” In the film, I interviewed my Grandmom “What do you love about art?” Her reply from which the title is derived, “The smallest attractions can be the most loved thing. Sometimes, things go unnoticed. It takes a lot of something little; the least of these.”
--Amy Diane Morrow
February 23, 2019

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