Oscars 2023 | “How do you measure a year?”: the father who asked his daughter questions for 16 years and was nominated

two decades ago, Jay Rosenblatt (New York, 1955) decided to film Ella, her daughter, every birthday.

The little girl was 2 years old at the time and he, an experimental filmmaker, wanted to spend more time with his family without giving up his artistic career.

So every anniversary of his daughter’s life, he turned on a homemade camera, attached a simple microphone to her, and asked her to sit on the couch and ask her the same list of questions forever.

The result was How do you measure a year? (in Spanish: “How do you measure a year?”), a short film in which he explores family relationships, parenting and human development.

Filmed over 16 years by Rosenblatt himself with the technology available to anyone of average means, the play was Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Documentarybut not won.

“I wanted to be real. I wanted people to feel that this was our specific relationship, but that they could identify with their own relationships between their children or their parents,” he said in an interview in 2021, when the short premiered at several festivals .

It is the simplicity yet universality of his work that has caught the attention of critics.

The portal rogerebert. com notes that any parent will see it as “a metaphor for the time they spend with their own children.”

Although they also say that the director – who was also nominated for an Oscar in the same category last year When we were bullies(“When We Were Stalkers”), in which he equally explores a personal story – making a documentary about him much more than anything else.

“It’s not very deep, but don’t be surprised if it wins,” they say.

In this note, we’ll tell you more about the movie, but be careful because it won’t premiere on HBO until June and June. Here you will find spoilers.

The questions

The staging is always the same: a typical sofa and a typical American living room wall with floral pattern. While Rosenblatt mainly shows his daughter’s face in almost every shot.

The girl laughs, jumps and sometimes even rolls her eyes. As the years go by, she sees herself with hairstyles and looks like different depending on the time. And, of course, his attitude towards his father also changes.

As a baby he enjoyed the camera, as a teenager he sometimes asks that everything has to be done quickly and later he is overflowing with words of love for his family.

The director, for his part, asks her questions that he himself describes as “simple”, but for a girl they are not necessarily.

“How old are you?” or “what are dreams?” They are part of the repertoire. She offers answers that are sometimes funny, sometimes very wise and sometimes painful.. Like when he told her at the age of 9 that the thing he feared most was “being different, not being able to fit in”.

But at the age of 11, she answered that same question: “I’m afraid of life, I’m afraid of life, because there are twists and turns that you don’t expect and that can be difficult. I don’t want to experience that.”

A phrase that is mature for its age, showing how complex a teenager’s mind can be.

“It was very interesting for me to see the difference of the years. How his emotions changed, how he expressed himself differently year after year whether it was difficult for him to communicate or when he didn’t want to,” Rosenblatt said in an interview for the YouTube channel. Filmmaker Fest.

The documentary is also a portrait of their relationship. For example, sometimes the young woman talks about their quarrels and how they make up.

The film, edited linearly over the years, culminates with Ella alone in front of the camera in a final space where her father lets her speak, but this time without questions.

She is an 18-year-old girl who is already going to college and says, “I miss you when I go to college. I’m glad you follow this kind of tradition (filming every year), they make me happy and remind me how much you love me.

a career turn

Rosenblatt describes How do you measure a year? as a “comedy” documentary, and echoing critics when he describes it as a much simpler work than previous works.

Among his long list of films, which began in 1994, what he calls “collages”, in which he superimposes archive material and gives them new meaning.

“My other films were very heavy, about very serious subjects,” he said in an interview.

And it is that his pieces, says a biography on the director’s own website, explore emotions and the psyche. One reason could be that before becoming a filmmaker, Rosenblatt was a therapist and had a master’s degree in counseling.

Right in graduate school, after taking a film elective, he decided to change majors.

“I took a film course there and fell in love with the process. I think I spent more time on these little projects than all the work in my Counseling classes,” he said Filmmaker Fest.

Later he decided to do a second masters in cinema and the result was more than 100 awards, in addition to participation in important festivals such as Sundance, in addition to Oscar nominations.

The film How do you measure a year? he embarked on it not knowing if he would eventually be able to make part of his exploration.

It wasn’t until the pandemic period that he had “time” to review and assemble the material. Now, looking ahead, he has said he will continue to explore.

“I don’t have a plan,” he said recently.