Adoption Themes in the Movies 2012 BEST AND WORST

My TOP FAVES:

1- The Lost Child-2000 TVM; Mercedes Ruehl, Jamey Sheridan; Rebecca goes in search of her natural parents. After her adoptive father dies, Rebecca decides to find the family her dad had described to her. In response to her search, she is contacted by a woman on the Navajo reservation who is looking for her twin siblings who were stolen from their mother soon after they were born. The women soon realize that they are sisters and Rebecca is welcomed. But when her husband, Jack, comes to see them, the differences between the two cultures rise to the surface.

2- Breakfast on Pluto - This dark comedy stars Cillian Murphy as a transgender adoptee/orphan searching for love and her long-lost mother in small town Ireland and London in the 1970s.

3- Sudden Fury - A Family Torn Apart is a 1993 television film directed by Craig R. Baxley, based on the novel Sudden Fury: A True Story of Adoption and Murder by Leslie Walker, which itself is based on a true story. One of the adoptees in the family is Native American and he was thought to be the murderer of his adoptive parents but he wasn't.

4- The Italian - see this stunning movie for the brilliant ending. (Subtitles)

5- Bambi - Animated film about a young deer, Bambi, growing up in the wild after his mother is shot by hunters.

6- Stolen Babies-1993 TVM; Lea Thompson, Mary Tyler Moore; Social worker exposes the Tennessee Children’s Home Scandal. Mary Tyler Moore plays the evil babyseller Georgia Tann.

7- Liebestraum: 1991 adoption-theme thriller with dark twists (see my review on Dec. 30, 2010.   http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/12/liebestraum-1991-adoption-theme.html)

Not the Best:

1 - Sioux City aka Ultimate Revenge-1994; Lou Diamond Phillips plays the role of a doctor who gets suspended on his birthday. At his adopted parent’s home, he has a party and one of the gifts is an American Indian necklace with a note from his birth mother who he has not heard from since he was given up for adoption when he was very young. In the note she wishes to see him. So he leaves to visit her only to arrive a few days after her death. He visits the local sheriff because he is curious of the circumstances of his mother's death. He then heads to the reservation in search of any relatives. He runs into his grandfather who is kind of a witch doctor. On the way back to town he is attacked by some of the sheriff's men who try to kill him. They leave him for dead, but he is rescued. He does a vision quest to try to identify why he was attacked. He discovers the reason he was given up for adoption: his father was the local sheriff. He didn't love the birthmother and ordered her to give him up for adoption...

2 - Flirting with Disaster-1995; Ben Stiller, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin; Farce about an adoptee searching for his birthmother. I was disappointed.

3 - Mommie Dearest-1981; Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid; about the adopted family life of Joan Crawford; several of her adopted children were stolen by the Tennessee Children’s Home and Georgia Tann. I hurt to watch this film.

4- Juno:  Juno is a smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker. With the help of her friend Leah, Juno finds her unborn child a "perfect" set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa, longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the total support of her parents as she faces some tough decisions. Even as popular as this movie was, it disturbed many adoptees including me.

5 - Orphan: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148204/ Disgusting!

6 - The Blind Side: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0878804/ Propaganda at it’s finest.

The Magdalene Sisters (2002): Adoption themes in the Movies #NAAM

One movie I highly recommend you see is the masterpiece  The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

         , Mary Murray , Britta Smith , Frances Healy , Eithne McGuinness , Phyllis McMahon , Rebecca Walsh , Eamonn Owens , Chris Simpson , Sean Colgan , Daniel Costello , Julie Austin , Sean McDonagh , Phyllis MacMahon

MrMarakai wrote this review: Writer/Director Peter Mullan follows up his surreal and blackly humourous Scottish family drama "Orphans" with this hard-hitting account of the agonising and torturous true-story of the abuse of young women from Ireland in the name of religion.
In 1960's, young women where incar... read morecerated in a Irish convent, run by the Catholic church, for committing such 'misdeeds' as flirting with boys, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and being raped. They are physically and psychologically abused by the head nun and her sadistic staff, who are convinced they are doing the Lord's work.
Having based his screenplay on actual Magdalene inmates' experiences, Mullan achieves an authenticity of what life was like for the young women that had to endure the injustices, humiliation and brutality of these asylums. At times it's very difficult to stomach, such is the sheer power and uncompromising telling of this harrowing story and it's full of overwhelmingly excellent performances. 

Geraldine McEwan as Sister Bridget, the head nun, gives one of the most absolute personifications of evil ever commited to the screen and Eileen Walsh is heart-breakingly compelling as the naive, downtrodden and religiously devoted Crispina.  Her performance was worthy of so much more recognition than she recieved. Speaking of which, the entire cast and crew deserved more awards attention on it's release. Had this been directed by someone with a higher profile than Mullan and his crew, this film would have been hailed as a masterpiece. As it is, it's had to rely on word-of-mouth to find an audience but this doesn't lessen the effect or superb work by everyone involved here.

Mullan's direction is flawless, the cinematography by Nigel Willoughby is stark, and almost de-saturated, adding to the overall feeling of desperation and loneliness of the women and as mentioned, the performances are perfectly pitched from a largely unknown cast. It may be hard for some to accept this behaviour went on but it's even harder to accept that these asylums lasted until 1996, when the last one was finally shut down.
A harrowing and emotionally charged drama that while based on fact, is highly subversive. If the Vatican condemns a film on it's release (which it did with this) then there's no doubt that you're in for a hard-hitting film.
Painful, provocative and important!

For a long list of movies with an adoption theme: www.adoptionhealing.com/AdoptionMovies.html

For a long time, movies send messages. Movies reach a wide audience. Movies like this one teach history and could help potential adoptive parents to understand what may have happened to the child they adopt and the mother who was forced to relinquish... Trace

Adoption Plotlines on TV #NAAM2012

ABC shows feature adoption plotlines

 

Cameron: ''Yes, I've gained a few extra pounds while we were expecting the baby. Which has been very difficult, but apparently your body does a nesting, very maternal, primal thing where it retains nutrients -- some sort of molecular physiology thing. But that's science, you can't fight it. So, ....''
Mitchell: ''I'm not saying anything.''
Cameron: ''You're saying everything!''

TV's newest gay couple, featured in the ABC insult-heavy comedy ''Modern Family.'' Cameron, the heavier of the pair, invites Mitchell's judgemental family over to announce their adoption of a baby girl from Viet Nam in the pilot episode. (Modern Family via HULU)

---

"A baby isn't like a Marc Jacobs suit. You can't return it if it doesn't fit.''
Scotty arguing with his husband Kevin on the ABC drama ''Brothers and Sisters'' about their interest in adopting a baby.

2011 shows with Adoption Plotlines: In Plain Sight, Glee, Parenthood, Once Upon a Time, NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, and Rizzoli and Isles.

We are going to look at movies and TV and all the ways the adoption industry portrays adoption this month (#NAAM 2012). 
If you have watched a TV show or movie with an adoption plotline, please add a comment on this blog... Trace

The Thick Dark Fog

"The Thick Dark Fog" Official Trailer from randy vasquez on Vimeo.

Read more here: http://www.thickdarkfog.com/?page_id=120

Thick Dark Fog" Official Trailer
http://vimeo.com/user9741689/trailer

Award winning documentary - The Thick Dark Fog.

Walter Littlemoon attended a federal Indian boarding school in South Dakota sixty years ago. The mission of many of these schools in 1950, was still to “kill the Indian and save the man.” The children were not allowed to be Indians – to speak their language or express their culture or native identity in any way at the risk of being severely beaten, humiliated or abused. What effects did these actions cause?

Many Indians, like Walter, lived with this unresolved trauma into adulthood, acting it out through alcoholism and domestic violence. At age 58, Walter decided to write and publish his memoirs as a way to explain his past abusive behaviors to his estranged children. But dealing with the memories of his boarding school days nearly put an end to it.

“The Thick Dark Fog” tells the story of how Walter confronted the “thick dark fog” of his past so that he could renew himself and his community.

For more information visit: thickdarkfog.com

Movie Review: The Italian (5 STARS)

MOVIE TRAILER is not available


I was asked to introduce this movie THE ITALIAN at Common Ground, the 3rd Middletown International Film Festival on November 10th at the Russell Library in Connecticut. After the movie, I explained that I was also placed in an orphanage then foster care before I was adopted. I told them this movie is based on a true story.
This feature movie is everything I hoped it would be - truthful, complex and forthright.
The setting, a Russian orphanage, is exactly as I imagined, with children parenting each other, the older ones creating a system of providing for the younger ones (by any means necessary, including prostitution) and a corrupt bureaucracy that sells the younger children (let's not call them orphans because they do have parents) to rich buyers who they solicit to adopt.
What unfolds is Vanya (age 6) is slated to be sold to a rich Italian couple and is paraded to them exclusively.
Soon after he has an encounter with a friend's mother; the women is looking for her son from the same orphanage who was adopted to Italy.
You can see clearly how this mother's visit infects all the children with hope and possiblities, especially Vanya.
What happens?
Vanya goes looking for information to find his mother. First he has to learn to read and then find his file locked in a safe. And after a chase and many tense moments, Vanya actually finds her, his mother.
The light on his face - and the shine that returns to his eyes - is why I highly recommend this film.
For anyone interested in the topic of international adoption, this movie will shape attitudes to close such orphanges worldwide, end all international adoptions, treat all children with more respect, address poverty, allow women to keep their babies and children (even unmarried) and educate potential adopters who need to recognize these children were made into orphans by goverments and religions.
The moral of this story: unite children with their families.

MY RATING: 5 STARS

Read more:
http://zuguide.com/The-Italian.html
Vanya Solntsev (played by child actor Kolya Spiridonov), an abandoned young boy living in a rundown orphanage in a small Russian village, rebels when he learns that he is about to be adopted by a rich Italian couple. After getting help to read his personal file, Vanya sets off to find his birth mother. Directed by Andrei Kravchuk.
Categories: Drama, Family. Year: 2005.


ANOTHER CLIP: http://youtu.be/FBGjBvXknNw
Russia, Lenfilm, 2005.

Drama.
Writer Andrei Romanov and director Andrei Kravchuk constructed this ingenious, tragicomic tale of a desolate, decaying orphanage in the Russian countryside that sells abandoned kids to prosperous Western Europeans. The adults running the operation live in a haze of greed and alcoholic self--pity; the fatalistic elder orphans are thugs and hookers who accept crime and brutality as their only option in life. In this Dickensian world, nine--year--old Vanya is adopted by an Italian family. With a loving family and freedom in a new country on the horizon he is the envy of his fellow orphans. Yet rather than accept this new life, Vanya flees in search of his birth--mother and the truth of his past. A dual--award winner at the Berlin Film Festival and the 2005 Russian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The Italian is an elegant and poignant allegory for the moral crisis of Russia's new post--communist generation.

Cast: Nikolay Spiridonov, Marya Kuznetsova, Nikolay Reutov, Yury Itskov, Denis Moiseenko, Andrey Elizarov, Aleksandr Sirotkin, Vladimir Shipov, Polina Vorobjeva, Olga Shuvalova, Dmitry Zemlyanko, Darya Lesnikova, Rudolf Kuld.

Director Andrey Kravchuk.

The Italian - Итальянец
It's a pretty tall order to ask a six-year-old to suddenly take on responsibility for his own life. The questions facing Vanya are really tough: does he want to live a comfortable life as an adopted child of a loving family in Italy? After all, for an abandoned Russian child like Vanya it really doesn't sound like a bad option. Serene life under the Mediterranean sun is awaiting him. But the boy longs to find his own mother, so he decides to set off in search of her. But before he can begin, Vanya must learn to read the file that holds the information he needs to find her. He embarks on his quest--and encounters a mysterious and dangerous world. The world of children is a universe with its own laws; a realm in which sometimes one's heart speaks louder than one's intellect. (YOUTUBE)

Movie Review: Liebestraum: 1991 adoption-theme thriller with dark twists

My Thoughts: This thriller is currently showing on Comcast as a free feature. The premise is murder. It takes the entire movie to learn the dying birthmother (Kim Novak) has killed three people and you learn about her pregnancy at the time of the murders and how she obviously gave up two children.
The plot twist is how two adoptees have an affair - and you are left to wonder if they are brother and sister. As I have blogged before - Hello! Isn't it time to open records so this kind of incest can't happen? Dah! But who am I?
Just an adoptee! I didn't make the stupid secrecy laws!

It's worth the time to see the movie. It was filmed in Binghamton, New York. (I have good friends there.)

Movie description: Two affairs, a generation apart. Nick (Kevin Anderson), a professor of architecture in upstate New York, comes to an Illinois town to be with his birth mother (Kim Novak) in the final days of her illness; he was adopted and has never known her. On the first day, he runs into Paul (Bill Pullman), a college friend, whose construction company is demolishing an old, downtown department store where a murder-suicide happened 30 years' before. The building is of beautiful cast-iron construction, so Nick wants to study it before the demolition. Paul introduces Nick to his wife, Jane (Pamela Gidley), and over the next four days, their attraction grows as Nick explores the old building, attends his mother's bedside, and unravels the past.
Background: The title is taken from Franz Liszt's composition Liebesträume (German: dream of love). Much of the movie, especially its external shots, was filmed in Binghamton, New York. The plot centers on a building with a cast iron frame, and Binghamton's downtown area includes one of the few cast-iron buildings still standing. When Liebestraum made its VHS debut, it was released in two editions — the R-rated theatrical version and an unrated director's cut. The DVD release, part of MGM's Avant-Garde Cinema series, features only the R-rated version. However, the deleted scene that marks the single difference between the two edits is included as a bonus feature on the disc.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Movie Review: Lost Sparrow solves mystery but leaves wounds exposed




Four Native American children adopted by the Billing family

On November 16, 2010, the documentary “Lost Sparrow” premiered on PBS Independent Lens.  Based on a true incident in 1978, two Crow Indian brothers (both adoptees) ran away from home and were found dead on railroad tracks the next day.

Chris Billing’s film takes a closer look at what killed these two boys and what truth shattered his entire family.

The filmmaker is one of four biological children. His parents adopted six, with four of them from the Crow tribe. Billing was 16 when the boys died. The family buries them in New York and moves on with their lives. His parents eventually divorce.

The filmmaker narrates how his little brothers Bobby (13) and Tyler (11) were trying to help their sister Lana (who is also Crow). Lana told her brothers she was being sexually molested by their adoptive father. The two boys were going to Montana to get help. They knew who they were and knew their tribe.

As the film unfolds, Billings’ story becomes more about the despondent quiet Lana, and how she didn’t survive the sexual abuse or find peace after her brother’s heroic gesture and unfortunate deaths.  Lana runs far away from the adopters to North Carolina. Her pain is so deep the alcohol abuse seems the only antidote she can afford. There are no signs of wealth where Lana lives; unlike the Billings and their homes in New Jersey and the summer mansion in upstate New York.

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Chris Billing said it took three years to make the film. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Billing, agree to see Lana on film but neither managed an appropriate response to her troubled past. Dysfunctional denial, which Mr. Billing’s exhibited while filming, seems inappropriate and not an apology, considering the facts revealed during the course of filming.

The man at the center of the conflict, the adoptive father, an all-controlling philanderer, rich businessman, acts like nothing happened, like he did nothing wrong. What you hope is he was charged as a pedophile and sent to prison. This didn’t happen.

What does happen is the filmmaker and his siblings repatriate the two boys to the Crow tribe and have them interned on tribal land. Chris films the boys’ father and tribal family who knew the boys were adopted by a rich East coast family but could do nothing to stop the adoption. Their grief leaves the viewer tormented.

After revealing the entire truth, the filmmaker said it did little to bond their family or cure old wounds, “If it was good for Lana, then making the film was worth it.”

Wounds this egregious and deep are not healed by a 78-minute film.


From the Lost Sparrow PR: 
On June 27, 1978, a 44-car Conrail freight train struck and killed two Crow Indian brothers near the town of Little Falls, New York -- a day after Bobby, 13, and Tyler, 11, had disappeared. The two boys had run away without warning from the white, Baptist family that had adopted them and their biological sisters seven years earlier, spiriting them from a troubled Montana reservation family to an idyllic Victorian castle across the country. Lost Sparrow recounts award-winning filmmaker Chris Billing's investigation, three decades later, into the dark family secret that prompted his adopted brothers to flee.