Road Work

Barbara Colombo’s first video, “Road Work” aired on Connecticut PBS in association with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts 1995 Film/Video Competition, as well as screening at several venues and panels throughout the northeast. “Kentucky Blues” recently received a director’s citation from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and screened at the open sheet venue of the Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival. Video projects in the works are a documentary on a WW2 female veteran Babe filmed on an organic farm in Olympia Washington and a series of videos for the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

“Road Work”

TRT: 38 minutes 1995
Produced, Directed, Camera, Edit
by Barbara Colombo
Masters Thesis, Rhode Island School of Design

This video is a semi-autobiographic documentary. I trace the passage of time through the history of my family and Edenwald Contracting Co., the New York City construction business they developed over fifty years. It closed its doors in 1995 with a public auction after the death of my grandfather.

In this video I raise questions from the past in order to understand the complexities of a family business, money, power, and generational differences over time. I look at immigration, Italian-American family influences and a patriarchal system.