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Family Secret Revisited

by | Vol 32 (3) 2014

When Jaap van Hoewijk discovered in 1997 that his father had not died in a motor accident, as he and his sisters had been told 23 years before, but rather had committed suicide, he decided to make a documentary about this discovery. The interview revisits the fascinating story of Family Secret (2001) and focusses on some issues that remain unresolved in the film: 1) relations between van Hoewijk and his mother and other family members during and after the making of the film; 2) what had prompted his search for the truth; 3) his unconscious knowing of this truth, that is, before its discovery; 4) a second family secret related to the first one; 5) the process of reconstructing what happened; 6) the process of rewriting one’s own life history, and; 7) how his film was received.

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