Abel Raises Cain

USA / 2005 ( feature length ) & 2007 ( TV length ) / Jenny Abel & Jeff Hockett / 82 & 57:35 mins

HOT DOCS INT’L DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL – Top Ten Audience Favorites
DOK LEIPZIG FILM FESTIVAL – Kinowelt Award

Can you believe everything that you read and hear in the news? Meet Alan Abel - a professional hoaxer and prankster. He's been fooling the American media for decades. Abel inadvertently started his hoaxing career in the late fifties, when he came up with the idea to form a fictitious animal protection organization. The moral mission of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (S.I.N.A.) as it was known, was to clothe all horses, cats, dogs and cows. As ridiculous as this may have sounded, the media took the story seriously, ran with it and began printing front page stories with accompanying headlines: “War Against Naked Animals” and “Naked Animal Crusade.” The news fueled a tirade of indignant public responses. From that moment on Abel realized just how easily the media could be manipulated with a dead-pan delivery and just the right amount of titillation. Fueled by the overwhelming response he received from this simple yet silly idea, Abel continued to wreak havoc in the media, permeating the airwaves with such stunts as The Campaign to Abolish Breastfeeding, Euthanasia Cruises and the KKK Symphony Orchestra. Another of his elaborate hoaxes was perpetrated with the help of his wife, Jeanne. Together, they created a character named Mrs. Yetta Bronstein, a Jewish housewife who ran for president in 1964 and again in 1968. Jeanne, a talented actress with a gift for doing character voices and convincing dialects, played the part of Mrs. Bronstein. Her campaign slogan, “Vote for Yetta and things will get Betta,” appeared in newspaper headlines around the world. Written and directed by his daughter Jenny Abel, Abel Raises Cain is a side-splitting, personal and loving tribute from daughter to father that uncovers the truth beneath the hoaxer. It is also a penetrating satire on the gullibility of the media that has become exceptionally relevant in this Information Age.

Official website www.abelraisescain.com