First Cousin Once Removed

This is filmmaker Alan Berliner's intimate portrait of his distant cousin, friend and former mentor Edwin Honig, who is living out the last years of his life with Alzheimer's. Honig was once a prominent and highly successful poet, translator, literary critic and university lecturer. In the final stage of his disease, however, he has lost almost all connection with his own past, his family and his personal identity. But sometimes in conversation his poetic soul flickers back to life again, producing beautiful moments in the film. This sensitive documentary tackles Edwin Honig's illness with compassion and humor, describing the story of his life with the same raw candor that characterized his poetry. Conversations with friends and family members paint a fragmentary picture of a life marked by tragedy, love, loss, irony and literary daring. Together, Honig's personal history and the study of his mental decline are more than the sum of their parts: this is a film essay on the function of memory and the importance of our ability to remember and forget.