England,
1993, 87 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Nick Broomfield
- prod
-
Nick Broomfield, Rieta Oord
- cam
-
Barry Ackroyd
- editor
-
Richard M. Lewis, Rick Vick
- source
-
Lafayette Film
-
COMMENTS
Nick Broomfield in person.
OTHER
Aileen Wuornos currently sits on Florida’s death row awaiting appeal. Charged with murdering seven men between 1990 and 1991, this 35-year old prostitute captured national headlines under her FBI-appointed alias—‘America’s first female serial killer.” Nick Broomfield’s (Monster in a Box, SFIFF 1992) latest documentary is not a sensationalized recapitulation of her crimes but an investigation of a different order. Delving beyond tabloid caricature for a more accurate profile of Wuornos, Broomfield charts her personal history to reveal an infinitely more complex portrait, a defendant who’s culpable and a victim. Simultaneously he probes the commercial exploitation of her case. The questions raised are disturbing indeed; namely, have political expediency and greed eviscerated due process? Weeks before her incarceration—and unbeknownst to her—Wuornos, specifically her crimes, had already spawned a macabre cottage industry that included book and Hollywood movie deals. From the cops to the courts, everyone seems intent on manipulating Wuornos for their own mercenary ends. Closest to the defendant and her pocketbook, are her attorney and self-appointed agent Steve Glazer and her recently adoptive mother Eileen Pralee. The bravado (and implicit irony) of the filmmaker’s approach may annoy some; hardly a dispassionate observer, Broomfield is very much a player in the tale he seeks to tell. Like The Thin Blue Line, the story of Aileen Wuornos powerfully transcends its screen limits because at its core a life hangs in a balance unfairly skewed.
—Laura Thielen
FACTOID #123
San Francisco native Mervyn LeRoy, director of the Hollywood classics Little Caesar and Goldiggers of 1933, was honored with the Festival’s first tribute October 22, 1965.
