"The Sweetest Sound" - by Julie Goell

What's in a name? Filmmaker Alan Berliner attempts to answer this age-old question with a unique new proposition: Will the real Alan Berliner please stand up?

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Berliner becomes obsessed with his name, its roots, and its implications about his personality. He questions his mother: "Alan, you're impossible!" To his query about the roots of the family name, his sister sharply retorts, "I leave that to you, Alan." Berliner is suffering from a self-diagnosed case of "same-name syndrome." Using a creative montage of stock "people" footage, the filmmaker evokes a nameless humanity. "Give a character a name," says Berliner, "and that's when it comes alive." How our name affects who we are and how we perceive one another is the subject of Berliner's untiring quest.

We follow Berliner's "egosurf" on the Internet as he locates all the Alan Berliners (its spelling varied) worldwide, and invites them to join him at his New York apartment for dinner, all travel expenses paid. He announces that his dinner will be "a casting call for the real Alan Berliner."

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Cut to the long-awaited Soho dinner. Thirteen Alan Berliners - mostly Jewish, all white and middle-aged - tackle the relentless if good-natured questions about habits, handwriting, self-image, and sense of connection to Jewishness. Good sports to the man, they wonder if the filmmaker hasn't brought them together in order to poison them and remain the only living Alan Berliner....

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Julie Goell is a practitioner of Jewish music and the antic arts. She lives on Peaks Island with her husband and son.

2004 MJFF Program Book edited by Abby Zimet