95 and 6 to Go A Filmmaker Connects with Her Grandfather
In this award-winning documentary, filmmaker Kimi Takesue finds an unlikely collaborator while visiting her resilient Japanese-American grandfather in Hawai'i. A recent widower in his 90s, Grandpa Tom immerses himself in his daily routines until he shows unexpected interest in his granddaughter's stalled romantic screenplay and offers advice both shrewd and surprising. Tom's creative script revisions serve as a vehicle for his memories of love, loss, and perseverance to surface.
Poignant and humorous, this intimate meditation on family and absence expands the vernacular of the "home movie" to consider how history is accumulated in the everyday and how sparks of humor and creativity can animate an ordinary life.
Winner of a Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Official Selection at DOC NYC and CPH:DOX.
"95 and 6 to Go is the home movie as subtle, multi-layered, self-reflexive work of art." - Peter Keough, The Boston Globe
Running Time
85 mins
Year
2016
Kanopy ID
6294791
Filmmakers
Features
Languages
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Comments (2)
"Poignant and funny, woven from family, history, geography and grief, this documentary had me at its opening shot of Kimi Takesue’s grandfather (a man the age my father would be if he still were here) going through his daily routine of countless push-ups, and moving on from there to watering ...Read more
"Poignant and funny, woven from family, history, geography and grief, this documentary had me at its opening shot of Kimi Takesue’s grandfather (a man the age my father would be if he still were here) going through his daily routine of countless push-ups, and moving on from there to watering his garden, clipping coupons and having his meals, while his granddaughter, offscreen, peppers him with questions. There is a rhythm to this devotional film driven by the recent grief shared by grandfather and granddaughter for the grandmother and wife who has died, and the coming grief for a courageous man facing his own ending – the source of the mysterious title, a medical prognosis taken up by the patient, contemplative, facing forward into his future.
That rhythm, oceanic and Pacific – Hawaii is Tom’s home, though Japan is his patrimony – punctuates the scenes of Kimi and Tom doing his daily life together. The sublime of the quotidian is embraced in turning from palms, sky and sea back to the filmmaker and her subject, engaged in the deliberate inquiries that she must pursue while his stories are still present in his words, in his voice, not just in photos. As kin can do, he is utterly at ease telling of his long life with its work and love, dancing and bickering, and an attitude born out of the simple truth that you “cannot grieve all your life.” Kimi has hard questions about a daughter lost to death too young, and how he and his wife, Kimi’s grandmother, whom we see aging through photography made history and biography, struggled together to keep on beyond loss.
We come to feel love for this kindly, sometimes querulous man, and we share Kimi’s grief in her loss, even as she has drawn a detailed cinematic portrait of what makes every life exemplary and ordinary, quotidian and sublime, and not forgotten. "
Read lessvery beautiful and powerful while visually serene and simplistic. an amazing experience.