What is a life well lived? Local filmmaker Sky Bergman set out to find out and is now sharing the answer with audiences across the nation.
Bergman is fond of saying, “everyone has a story to tell." This story started as an attempt to record nearly a century of experience – lessons from a grandma that could be shared for generations to come.
“I tell my students – the more personal, the more universal something becomes. and so I think they could see how personal this project was. But yet, it has a universal message,” said Bergman.
She went on to spend six years documenting more than 3,000 years of experience in video.
“Everyone has a story to tell if you just take the time to listen to them,” said Bergman.
The stories were collected in a feature-length film that has been playing at the Palm Theatre in San Luis Obispo for the past month. It wraps up this week. Bergman and even some of the movie’s stars met with audiences during some of the showings.
“History has a way of often repeating itself if we don’t learn from it… and I was very grateful to be part of this film. After having seen it, I’m very proud to be associated with the people I find in the film,” said Paul Wolff. Both Paul and his wife Marion escaped Nazi Germany as children.
“The point at which I knew this was going to be a feature-length film – because I thought it was just going to be a webisode thing or I don’t know was when I met Paul and Marianne Wolff – I’m Jewish and I didn’t know about the kinder transport and, for some reason, that really struck me in a way that I thought this has to be – it is bigger than what I thought it was,” said Bergman.
She says some of her favorite advice comes from a well-known retired pediatrician, Louis Tedone.
“I think one of the things I tell my kids is that happiness is a state of mind. You can be happy with the things you have or miserable with the things you don’t have. And you make up your mind.”
The advice and experiences will hopefully now live on for a long time to come.
