The family can be seen as a microcosm of society at large, with its systemic assumptions about acceptance, behavior, and control. Rather than grounding their observations about familial relationships in one particular story, Jeanne Finley and John Muse have created an unusual triptych, O Night Without Objects, that ricochets poetic resonance off of factual recounting. Two short experimental works, Time Bomb (8 mins) and The Adventures of Blacky (7 mins), dealing with insidious aspects of acculturation, serve as brackets to a full-length documentary, Based On a Story (45 mins). The centerpiece, Based On a Story, examines a "real" event, the strange friendship of Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of Nebraska's KKK chapter, and Michael Weisser, cantor at a local synagogue. Many families emerge and intersect: those of Trapp and Weisser, both past and present, and, around them, the community of on-lookers, including neighbors, the press, even Disney Studios. Welcomed into the Weisser family home, Trapp forsakes his racist ideas, eventually converting to Judaism. Based On a Story exposes the family's uncanny ability to re-invent relationships of power in the name of survival. Preceded by shorts:Involuntary Conversion (Jeanne Finley, 1991). Sparked by the Gulf War, this sardonic work looks at the euphemistic language of warfare, such as "soft target" and "collateral damage." (9 mins)Deaf Dogs Can Hear (Jeanne Finley, 1983). A tragic yet humorous tale of a young girl's first pet, a misshapen chihuahua, and its many disfiguring calamities. (5:20 mins) -Steve Seid