USA,
2006, 70 min
Shown in 2007
CREDITS
- dir
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Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland
- prod
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Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland
- cam
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Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland
- editor
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Ryan Fenson-Hood
- mus
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Justin Marchacos
- source
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Roco Films International, 80 Liberty Ship Way Suite 5, Sausalito, CA 94965. FAX: 415-332-6798. EMAIL: annie@rocofilms.com.
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COMMENTS
Peter Sutherland and Jack Youngelson, Justin Marchacos and documentary subject Tierney Gearon attended.
OTHER
In 2001, photographer Tierney Gearon’s images of naked family members, including her two young children, were shown at a London gallery. The police found them pornographic, a view quickly challenged by members of the press. As the latest in a long line of photographers such as Sally Mann and Jock Sturges, whose images of children and young girls in graceful states of nude repose garnered both art world praise and legal inquiry, Gearon found herself embroiled in controversy. Having worked for years as a photographer, Gearon turned to family members as subjects when her marriage disintegrated in the late ’90s. “All these photos are portraits of myself,” Gearon states. This provocative documentary debates that claim while revealing Gearon as both doting mother, pregnant with her third child, and devoted daughter of an emotionally troubled mother (herself the subject of Gearon’s highly charged images). “Wait, I want to take a picture,” Gearon says time and again; watching her load film, click off shots and direct her mother and children, we see her using the camera both to protect herself, by enabling her to see while being hidden, and to expose herself, by displaying the images she makes. Codirectors Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland have created a beautifully layered portrait of Gearon that is shaped by compassion and artistry, woven together through deft visual and audio editing and enriched by Justin Marchacos’ superbly understated score. Viewers are trusted to make their own decisions regarding Gearon's emotionally and ethically complex images.
—Sidney J.P. Hollister
FACTOID #202
At the 1978 SFIFF, Paul Mazursky received a tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently, the facility’s janitorial staff had not been notified, and the padlocked doors of the Palace had to be cut so the filmmaker and his audience could be let in.
