HOME VIDEO : VCR Viewing : Berliner’s Amusing, Touching Documentaries on Home Video

Documentaries are quite literally a family affair for the award-winning New York filmmaker Alan Berliner. His unique examinations of family life, which have aired on PBS, are making their video debuts on Milestone Film & Video ($30 each).

“The Family Album,” from 1986, is a clever examination of the family structure from the 1920s through the 1950s. Using a vast collection of “found” home movies, Berliner interweaves oral histories and family recordings to offer a remarkable collage of American family life from birth to death.

“Intimate Stranger,” which Berliner made in 1991, is a no-holds-barred portrait of his grandfather, Joseph Casuto, a Jew who came to America from Egypt after World War II and went on to become a pioneer businessman in postwar Japan. Adored by his Japanese colleagues, Casuto spent more time in Japan with them than he ever did with his family in Brooklyn. He would give advice and encouragement to people he hardly knew, but was a stranger to his family--undemonstrative and unsupportive. This riveting examination of the complex Casuto also shows how his neglect impacted the family.

Five years later, Berliner turned the camera on his father, Oscar, in “Nobody’s Business.” A cranky, crusty recluse, Oscar had endured two brain surgeries and had no interest in his son’s questions about his life and what transpired to break up his marriage. “It’s nobody’s business,” he keeps snapping at his son, who, in turn, keeps prodding him to talk about his life. Berliner fils, who seems to have the patience of Job with his father, includes a lot of photographs and family movies of Oscar, who, in his youth, was handsome, charming, gregarious and was, from all accounts, a good father. The documentary also features interviews with Berliner’s mother and younger sister.

To order any of the documentaries, call (800) 603-1104.