Filmmaker Makes Powerful Film About His Relationship With His Mother

Epoch Newsroom
5/10/2016
Updated:
5/11/2016

Charles Frank felt a certain disconnect to his family as he got older, but couldn’t quite figure it out.

Part of it, he thought, was that his parents had never recorded any home videos.

“It’s interesting,” Frank told LittleThings. “The ‘disconnect’ was not because of any dramatic or horrible reason, it just started slowly happening after I left home when I was 18. I think I was so focused on developing my career and my own ‘home’ that other relationships fell by the wayside.”

Then, one day, his mom asked for his help with the computer. She wanted to transfer old family videos to a hard drive. Now 21, Frank was stunned to learn he had access to childhood memories all along--20 hours of videos showing himself learning how to ride a bike, walking along a beach, and playing with his dad.

That’s when he dug into his cell phone and found 38 previously unheard voicemails from his mom, Dawn.

The newfound truth prompted him to make a short film, featuring narration from Dawn’s actual messages and clips from the home videos.