SAT SEPT 10, 2016 // BLUEBIRD CANYON ROAD (MUSIC VIDEO)

TALENT, OREGON

My Russian great grandfather made extra money by secretly breeding his peasant horses with thoroughbreds that Tsar Nicholas kept at a summer palace. A resentful neighbor snitched, and he was in trouble. Fearing execution, Aleksey Musika stowed away on a boat bound for Nova Scotia that sunk mysteriously on the night it was supposed to reach port. Aleksey swam to shore and eventually made his way to Coatesville, PA where he worked in a steel mill and raised his family. I used a song I wrote and recorded on the subject, lots of family home movies my father asked that I digitize, along with some found footage of Russian history, to illustrate my family's history. The story goes from Russia in the early 1900s to Laguna Beach, CA where I was born in the seventies, and returned to in the autumn of 2015 to shoot the footage needed to finish up this work.