Or Tommy Hilfiger, who conjures up a kind of freewheeling, multiculti gathering, a super-inclusive extended family we all wish were part of.

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The pursuit of long-silenced emotions and the poignant stories that underlie them (teased out through an unusually good use of family Super-8 film footage) also makes revealing inroads into modern French history, as when Suzette discusses students who were children of Harkis (Algerians who fought with the French against their own national-liberation movements).

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The creation of Class B super-voting shares allowed the Sulzberger-Ochs family to maintain an all-but-unchallengeable control of the company while still allowing it to tap the public markets for capital it needed for expansion.

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Subsequently the family - or perhaps a single species - moved across the super-continent of Gondwana into what is now South America.

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The Steinbrenner family naturally wants to keep selling the super priced Legends Suites at their four-year-old baseball palace, and keep the value of their YES Network propped up as much as possible.

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When super model Linda Evangelista, 46, and billionaire Francois Henri-Pinault, 49, entered the small family courtroom Monday afternoon for the third day of the much-hyped hearings to establish child support payments, they were all smiles.

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