Intimate Stranger

Filmmaker Alan Berliner in this film reconstructs the life of his grandfather Joseph Cassuto. Part biography, part home movie, and part photo-montage, the film traces Cassuto's pre-war life in Cairo, when he worked for a Japanese cotton trading firm. After the waa he moved to New York to join his American bride. There he maintained an obsessive correspondence with Japanese friends. Soon Cassuto had made himself indispensable to Nichemen Corporation, an Osaka trading giant. Cassuto spent often eleven months a year in Japan. With this film Alan Berliner portrays the post-war economic history of Japan by telling the story of his grandfather. As his grandson, he wanted to learn why his grandfathers passionate dedication to the Japanese post-war recovery created such bitterness and confusion within his family. Also, Berliner wanted to understand why his grandfather saw himself as a goodwill ambassador between Japan and the rest of the world. He himself cherised his special interracial and inter-ethnic friendships. By interweaving important aspects of Japanese, American, Egyptian, and Jewish history and culture, it is Berliner's hope that INTIMATE STRANGER can contribute to a greater international understanding. This is something that Joseph Cassuto would have dearly wanted.