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MY FATHER, THE GENIUS

Lucia Small’s 2002 New England Film and Video Festival’s Best of Festival winner takes as its subject her father, Glen, a visionary architect who could make a strong case for the distinction of the title except that as his first wife — Lucia’s mother — points out, he didn’t have much genius at personal relationships. Glen dumped Lucia, her mom, and her two sisters when Lucia was just a kid, and she didn’t hear much from him until years later, when he asked her to write his biography. Instead of a book, though, she agreed to make this film, a kind of real-life The Royal Tenenbaums in which dad comes off as insufferable but nonetheless charming and sympathetic, an uncompromising idealist whose failure to "play the game" exiled him to the margins. One of many ironies revealed in Small’s blithe, brilliant, and intimate but detached documentary is that her father’s insistence on putting people first in his architecture resulted in his excluding them from his life. (video/82 minutes)

BY PETER KEOUGH

Issue Date: August 22 - 29, 2002
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