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Cleaning Out the House

Both of Keva Rosenfeld's parents died recently. He and his sister Rachel spent months cleaning out their childhood home and preparing it for an estate sale.

Amid the sadness and loss, Rosenfeld found small joys in the cupboards, drawers and closets, where a lifetime of memories were stored.

Some of the items were priceless, judged by sentimental value: the statuette that once graced the top of the Rosenfeld wedding cake so many years ago; a similar statuette from a Bar Mitzvah celebration; old school photos...

And there were other, more trivial items: junk drawers full of discarded hairbrushes and keys without locks, extension cords, closets full of shoes and clothes.

Some of the items most precious to Rosenfeld reflected his earliest ambitions to be a filmmaker. In 1970, the future director recorded the Apollo 13 lift-off from his family television set. The old tape and others like it remain an audio record of a time and place long lost to memory.

Rosenfeld's ensemble film Twenty Bucks has just been re-released on DVD.

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