ABBY, I HARDLY KNEW YA 56 min
Order this film for home use

Lindalee Tracey never knew her father. He left in the dim first months of her life, and died a penniless alcoholic. Her childhood was cautioned by his failure and she was taught to bury him long before he died. Still she senses his character in her own, feels his poisons in her blood, sees his face in hers. Fatherless as she is, she is her father's daughter.

With a daughter's need for meaning and memory and explanations, Lindalee sets out to reclaim her derelict father, determined to weed through the facts and fictions of his life-to redeem, to somehow forgive.

As Abby lay dying in 1971, finishing his journey, Lindalee was running away from home and beginning hers; running away from death, just like Abby had run away when his father died. It would take her years to choose what path to take-away from the abyss into which Abby fell.

Abby Tracey was a petty crook and con artist-as charming as a snake in Eden. From cherubic Irish alter boy to attentive uncle to pathetic street rubbie, Lindalee examines his life through surviving relatives and friends-and the official public record. But she sees her father perhaps most clearly in the tired souls of other destitute men, whom she speaks to with warmth and compassion.

There are several threads to the film, each with its own distinct texture: the chronicling of Abby's life, from idealized childhood to painful oblivion; the daughter's search, from flophouses to the military archives; and dramatic narrative components which heighten Abby's unfathomable presence.

ABBY, I HARDLY KNEW YA is a psychological and emotional journey, as Lindalee lovingly pieces together the shards of a life almost erased by time and circumstance.

"Lindalee never sentimentalizes her subject. She presents Abby as honestly as she finds him. With so little to work with - a handful of snapshots, blurred recollections- it's amazing the way she has recreated a father she never knew. This is his touching memorial."

Jim Bawden, Starweek

BRONZE PLAQUE, COLUMBUS INTERNATIONAL FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL, '95
CORK FILM FESTIVAL INVITATIONAL SCREENING, 1995
NOMINATED, BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY, THE 1996 GENIE AWARDS