Your Brother. Remember?

Details

Your Brother. Remember?
Directed by Zachary Oberzan
Opens April 6
ReRun Gastropub Theater

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More About

• Zachary Oberzan
• Jean-Claude Van Damme
• Brussels
• Martial Arts
• Kickboxing

It begins as a one-man show, with master of ceremonies Zachary Oberzan seated onstage, doing a deliberately stilted Jean-Claude Van Damme impression, complete with blockhead-mystical gestures. But there is, at the heart of Your Brother. Remember? (which originated as a stage piece), a wealth of filmed material. Two decades ago, Oberzan (who was also behind the recent extreme-DIY First Blood adaptation Flooding With Love for the Kid) shot lo-fi parodies of the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme film Kickboxer, and some of the more obviously staged segments from the mondo compilation "documentary" Faces of Death, with his brother, Gator. In 2009, the two set about to re-enact those re-enactments. Your Brother. Remember? represents, in part, a mash-up of the new and old home-video footage, as well as clips from the original source material. Family is a theme of Kickboxer, and Oberzan weaves in the film so that it reflects, with an amusing bluntness, upon the brotherly collaboration it inspired. Additional video musical spoofs relate Gator's real-life struggles with drug addiction and gradually clarify the return to the Kickboxer/Faces of Death project as an attempt at reconciliation after years of estrangement (third Oberzan sibling Jennie also lends a hand). Gator's game reprisal of his Muscles From Brussels screen persona is increasingly poignant, as we learn more about the events that occurred between the two Oberzan Kickboxers. At barely more than an hour, Your Brother. Remember? is a formal clusterfuck in the best sense, held together by Oberzan's irrepressible faith in the redemptive power of the cultural scrap heap of adolescence.