The Accident
1998

This is an independent film that takes place over a quarter of century. Joseph Lovett's film The Accident is a personal film journey, a search for the "real" lives of his long-dead parents whose memories linger as little more than snap shots.

"When I began the project, I thought it was a strictly personal film. Twenty three years ago, as a 28-year-old fledging filmmaker, I began to wonder what I would have thought of my parents if I had gotten to know them. My father died an agonizing cancer death and four years later, my mother died outside our home in a freak accident, crushed by her own car against a neighbor's tree. I was the only witness. It was clearly a defining moment in my life.

So, I set out to learn about who my parents were by creating a video portrait made up of interviews of the people who had known them. As I listened to my brothers and sisters recollect the same incidents, I was startled to discover that there is no true history, no objectivity, no one picture of my parents. Everyone saw them differently. Each interview revealed different aspects of my parents and of the dynamics of a large and volatile family as it grew through changing circumstances.

At the age of fifty, with a career of documentary film-making behind me, I decided to confront some of my own fears and enter the film myself. It was time to deal not just with my parents and their deaths but also the effects of their deaths on me; time to confront childhood traumas with an adult on my side: myself.

Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, referred to the project as my 'parental memory tape.' Though this film is a personal one, its themes are not. As I have shown excerpts to individuals over the years, I have learned that the search for one's parents is a universal voyage, even if they are living. 'The Accident' is a journey through external and internal dramas that draw people in as they hear their own stories reflected in mine."

- Joseph F. Lovett

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