I Like It a Lot

A baby turns your life upside down, also filmmakers' lives. Even during his wife's pregnancy, American documentary veteran Jay Rosenblatt could no longer concentrate from behind his camera and decided to do something with his restlessness. This resulted in I Used to Be a Filmmaker, which captured the first eighteen months in the life of his daughter Ella. And now there is the four-minute film I Like it a Lot, about a daughter, a chocolate ice cream and a white T-shirt. In what language do you communicate with your child, the director asks us and himself. This language not only consists of words, but also of gestures, strolls, teasing, jokes, jungle gyms, candy and places. Rosenblatt shows us one of these places in more detail. “Where are we going?,” the tiny tot asks him like a grownup who has been wandering the globe for thirty years. “To the ice cream parlour,” her father replies. This place is an icon in the relationship between father and daughter. Rosenblatt rarely appears on screen himself; the camera is always directed at Ella. When the chocolate ice cream is smeared all over her face and shirt and she drops the remainder on the floor, she asks for another one. “I like it a lot,” she says. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)