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Phantom Limb
In twelve short chapters, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt reflects on the loss of his younger brother in 1964. Eliot Mitchell Rosenblatt was barely seven years old and ill for two years. Jay, two years his senior, felt guilty after Eliot’s death but couldn’t express his feelings. Nobody in the family discussed the subject.
The twelve chapters are introduced as in a silent movie. The inserted titles refer to the different stages of mourning the filmmaker experienced. He uses titles like separation, collapse, grief, denial, confusion, shock, communication and comeback. For each episode, Rosenblatt rummaged through film archives for associative footage, mainly in black-and-white. “Collapse” is illustrated by images of buildings that are demolished with dynamite. In “Shock”, a scientist describes the reaction of two rats in a cage who are administered a shock. In “Loss”, a man explains how you can still feel your arm, even if it was amputated a long time ago. This phenomenon is called phantom limb pain.
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This film was part of yanco’s October 2026 calendar