Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington, NY November
2003
by Vic Skolnick, Director
"For most the term ‘adoption’ describes a seemingly simple act: Parents
of a single person yearning for a child of their own apply to an agency and are rewarded
with a child who will bear their name and become a legal loving member of the family.
Artist and birthmother, Sheila Ganz, sharing her personal experience, created her
documentary about adoption to foster awareness of the extraordinary complexity that
envelops the lives of people who share that emotionally gripping experience.
Her accomplishment gives voice to the broad spectrum of people whose lives are transformed
or unsettled by failure to resolve these intensely personal relationships. Personally
vivid tales of discovery of one’s origins are accompanied by a social history that
provides a background to the changing official regulations set for homeless children and
unwed mothers. Playing a significant role were religious, racial and social class
prejudice. In the 19th century, city children were sent to farms and were
arbitrarily separated from siblings and displayed on blocks for 'sale.'
In recent decades the individual’s right to information is becoming more readily
accessible. Most wrenching are the exchanges between parents and child: 'Why did you
abandon me?' And the response, depending on which it was that discovered the other. Very
fearful for adoptive parents was the arrival of the birth parents who might alter their
relationship with their adoptive child, and most deeply moving were the special
relationships that developed between birth and adoptive parents.
Sheila Ganz’s inspiration for the film grew out of her experience as a birthmother
who gave up her child. She gave voice to others and her broad research in the social and
historical background gives us a better understanding of the many sides of adoption."
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© 2008 Sheila Ganz