Must Read After My Death

BECOME A FAN OF "MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH"!

Filmmaker Morgan Dews was very close to his grandmother Allis, but it wasn’t until after her death in 2001 that he became aware of an astounding archive she’d amassed throughout the 1960s. Filled with startlingly intimate and candid audio recordings detailing her family’s increasingly turbulent lives, the collection also contained hundreds of silent home movies, photographs and written journals. Using only these found materials, Dews has fashioned a searing family portrait that affords fly-on-the-wall access to one family’s struggles amid an America on the verge of dramatic transformation.

Must Read After My Death follows Allis, her husband Charley and their four children in Hartford, Connecticut. Charley’s work takes him to Australia four months each year, so the couple purchases Dictaphone recorders as a way to stay in touch throughout Charlie’s extended absences. A modern woman at least a decade ahead of her time, Allis struggles against conformity – against the conventional roles of wife and mother. She finds the recordings cathartic and, with the family’s cooperation, incorporates them into their everyday existence. When the family turns to psychologists and psychiatrists, their strife increases and the recordings turn progressively darker – even desperate. All the while, Dews employs the family’s many home movies and the seemingly placid, typically American façade that they convey, as visual counterpoint to the raw and sobering tape recordings.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING...

"I watched this film horrified and fascinated!"
(Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)

"It is virtually impossible to look away"
(Betsy Sharkey, LA Times)

"The best film opening in Chicago this week"
(Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune)

"Morgan Dews has created a fascinating and disturbing documentary about life in the suburbs in the 1950s that is more compelling than "Revolutionary Road". He has brilliantly pieced together a jigsaw puzzle of audio recordings and 8mm film that allow his grandmother to speak from the grave about her seemingly normal, but in fact dysfunctional life."
(Cynthia Haines, KCUR / Kansas City NPR affiliate)

“The audience will be riveted! An intriguing and unsettling look at the turmoil hidden behind the white picket fences of suburbia.”
(Stephen Farber, Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter)

“This is extraordinary cinema!”
(James Christopher, Times of London)

“Absorbing and deeply moving!
A raw, riveting and brutally honest documentary film.”
(Jeff Craig, 60 Second Preview)

“A must see! Spellbinding, voyeuristic and frequently disturbing.”
(Rob Christopher, Chicagoist)

“Devastating and captivating!”
(Omar P.L. Moore, The Popcorn Reel)

“As mesmerizing as it is uncomfortable. A welcome reminder of the difference between true confessions and true art.”
(James Rocchi, Cinematical)

“A kind of domestic horror movie, an eerie call from beyond the grave.”
(Joan Dupont, Int’l Herald Tribune)

“As engrossing as it is heartbreaking.”
(Chris Pandolfi, Gone with the Twins)

“Mesmerizing It’s impossible not to be both horrified and powerfully moved.”
(Rick Kisonak, Film Threat)

"A fascinating chronicle!"
(Mark Holcomb, Time Out New York)

"Entrancing!"
(Andrew Sarris, New York Observer)