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When aspiring filmmaker Morgan Dew's grandmother Allis died, he stumbled onto a treasure trove of found audio and video -- 8 mm home movies, audio discs and tapes. "Must Read After My Death," she had labeled them. He opened each and found a veritable Pandora's Box of family dysfunction, a potential film essay on the "swinging '60s" and its consequences laid bare.

Dew combined the audio -- recorded letters from a couple often separated because of grandfather Charley's work as an insurance executive -- and layered it under home movies to create a mesmerizing survey of a family caught up in personal psychodrama, a Running With Scissors without the laughs. The parents took part in the faddish "open marriage" concept and matter-of-factly commented on each other's dalliances on tape. Mom curled up in self-absorption on diary tapes that she intended her shrink and later her kids would hear -- "evidence" of what she endured in her life with Charley, the great promise she'd once had, lost.

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