Orion Climbs

This meditation on family and friends uses, as a point of departure, the relationship between the maker and his grandparents. The piece combines colorized Pixelvision and standard Pixelvision interviews, video beamed from the space shuttle Discovery, and English language records from the 1940s, to explore this often strained but humorous relationship. O’Reilly creates a child’s world, full of curiosity, in which all questions ultimately boil down to the question of identity. In a number of short interviews spread throughout the video, various people tell their most important memories of youth. With marvelous candor, these anecdotes reveal the sense of myth and magic that belongs to children, the sense of acceptance of things as they are, alongside the wonder of discovery.