Everything’s for You

“Everything’s for You” reflects the filmmaker’s relationship with his deceased father, a man who survived both the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. The film utilizes a combination of previously shot material (1974-78), family photographs, archival footage, printed footage, cell animation sequences (by Emily Hubley), and computer graphics to create a mosaic, a meditation on filial relationships. Dialogue is in both Yiddish and English. “… Ravett makes old snapshots flicker like candles in the wind. Archival footage of the Lodz ghetto appears in ethereal negative. The film is composed of dreamlike fragments and traces, accompanied by Ravett’s incantatory interrogation of these mute images.” – J. Hoberman, Premiere “Ravett’s ‘Everything’s for You’ is one of the most moving films I saw in 1989. In intimate psychological detail, the filmmaker examines a relationship full of regret and longing – a relationship in which intimacy failed. The possible causes of this failure are skirted, suggested, and examined through the construction and repetition of images taken from a diversity of sources and reproduced by a variety of methods. The film consists of images filmed and photographed, digitized, animated, and optically printed; texts spoken, written, and unvoiced; and sounds heard, imagined, and projected onto other sources. These elements form a cinematic structure on a foundation of found and fresh – archival and original – materials.” – Grahame Weinbren, Millennium Film Journal