Morgan Dews’s grandmother, Allis, passed away in 2001. She had never spoken about her marriage to his grandfather, Charley, while she was alive. After her death, Dews uncovered an anthology of family materials: 300 pages of transcripts, 50 hours of audio, and 201 home movies. Dews assembles the footage to present an eerily translucent portrait of his grandparent’s troubled marriage. Charley traveled for work, leaving Allis at home with the children, and the family recorded messages to one another via Dictaphone. What unfolds is a stark portrait of a crumbling marriage. As if let in on a secret, the wrenching audio recordings project a very different picture from the images presented of happy family life on screen. Scratches and pops adorn the footage, and some passages are more difficult to hear than others. Like the emotions of Dews’s grandparents, the words and pictures are scarred by time, but in this film they are carefully and loyally preserved.  ST