sink back or swim foward

I think my favorite thing behind sink or swim was the linkages it made between past and present without overanalyzing them in a phsychiatric sense. The film allowed the narrator to rehash memories through a new light as she struggled to come to terms with her past, but yet she did not blame these events for her present state but rather she was just taking them into consideration. The filmmaker crossed into what seemed to be several different "camps" of film- she clearly used autobiographical techniques in telling the story, but she combined these with what seemed to be structural qualities of formalism and perspective like that used by Stan Brakhage to show the way in which she really saw the world. I found this combination to allow the film to be able to go beyond a simple analyzation of self, and I think this makes it one of the better films we have seen this year. It allows for constant re-evaluation of self through the ties of present and past events.