DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL - A Childhood on Fire
My thoughts... too tired to write at this time
The title of the documentary has a double meaning. The literal meaning is from a childhood experience of child abuse. He said that as children they had a racist, cruel and abusive white step-father. Nick and his two brothers had been playing in the kitchen with the stove. The step-father said that he'd show them what it was like to play with fire. He lined up the three small boys and lit their pajamas on fire one at a time burning up their stomachs.
When Nick went to school his teacher noticed the burns and called child protective services on the parents. The children went to foster care and the parents were temporarily put in jail. They were acquitted and the children had to go back to live with their parents again. The abuse continued through his childhood until he went away to the Marines when he was 18. The step-father also using racial nick names as he addressed the boys.
When Nick came back from the Marines he got married and had two children. Although he got divorced he is a devoted dad. He writes notes of encouragement and support to his children constantly. He wants them to feel the love of a parent that he never had.
The director said that he got to know Nick slowly over years before they could have the conversations that were brought up in the film. So it was raw and deep portrait.
SFFILM Program Description:
(Jason Hanasik, USA 2019, 14 min)
A father writes notes of encouragement to his sons, trying use the lessons he has learned from his own difficult childhood and painful experiences with toxic masculinity to forge a better path for his own children.
Better Description from the filmmakers website:
Synopsis:
When Nick was six years old, he and his two older brothers were set on fire by their white stepfather.
Now in his early forties, Nick is a retired Marine, small business owner and raising two sons that are the same age he and his brothers were when they were set ablaze.
“A Childhood on Fire” is a film about the father figures who violated Nick, the effects that abuse had on Nick’s sense of self and security, and the ways he is interrupting a cycle of violence so that his two boys thrive.
At its core, the film wonders, what do you do when you're constantly told you're disposable? Can you reparent yourself? If so, what could that look like?
“A Childhood on Fire” was commissioned by The Guardian’s Documentaries Division.
DirectorJason Hanasik
Jason Hanasik is a filmmaker, artist, curator, and journalist. His work has appeared in The Guardian, at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, in the Los Angeles Times, in the academic journal Critical Military Studies, at various international film festivals, on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Ace Theatre in LA, and in solo and group visual art exhibitions worldwide. He is currently a resident at SFFILM’s FilmHouse where he is developing a screenplay and editing new films for The Guardian’s Documentaries Division and the BBC. (SFFILM)
Jason Hanasik and the subject Nick were present for q an a
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