I’ve been working mainly on my art, film and food project The Art and Politics of Eating http://theartandpoliticsofeating.com since 2008. A year or two ago, however, I quite suddenly became interested in delving into my family history, and after about a year of research, produced this ten minute preview of the project.
What Real Happened – An Inquiry into My Family History and Lore from Zev Robinson on Vimeo.
What Real Happened – An Enquiry into My Family History and Lore is a documentary project about my father’s family starting with my widowed great-grandfather emigrating from Ukraine with his son to North America, and ending up an Orthodox Rabbi, property owner and Prohibition-era bootlegger in San Francisco. My grandmother fled a pogrom with her family. My uncle rode the rails in the Great Depression and fought in WW2 after leaving home when he was 16, while my father, too young to fight in WW2, joined the Israeli army in 1948 and fought in the War of Independence.
There are several cousins and historians I’m hoping to interview, and archives to visit. It has a long way to go yet, and I plan to make it a main focus of my work over 2024 and most likely beyond.
