This sounds like a great film! Wish more of these films were made
available in Canada!
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http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/entertainment/film_junkie/index.php/2009/04/19/shooting-beauty-honey-mind-if-i-follow-you-with-a-camera-for-10-years/
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**<http://news.bostonherald.com/blogs/entertainment/film_junkie/?p=161&srvc=home&position=recent>SHOOTING
BEAUTY: Honey, mind if I follow you with a camera for 10 years?
Developing an emotional connection to your film subject is a hazard/benefit
of any documentary project. That still doesn’t make it any easier to make a
movie about your wife.
George Kachadorian started following his wife Courtney with a camera 10
years ago as she first followed people at a United Cerebral Palsy dance with
a camera. Get another photographer or filmmaker to follow George and then
you’ll have the ultimate artistic chain reaction.
“Shooting Beauty,” which promises to “change what you thought you knew about
living with a disability—and without one,” makes its Boston debut next week
at the Independent Film Festival Boston. The documentary screens at 7:45
p.m., Sunday April 26, at the Somerville Theater in Davis Square.
When the movie recently premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival in North
Carolina, a prestigious documentary showcase, it packed a 1,000-seat theatre
and received a standing ovation with the crowd chanting, “To New York! To
New York!” Only Courtney witnessed this, because George was in Arizona for
the Phoenix Film Festival.
“After 10 years of pushing,” George says. “What could I do sitting in
Phoenix Comfort Inn room 210 besides weep?”
We frown upon crowds that hype New York over Boston, but nevertheless, we’re
curious: What’s it like to balance a documentary and a marriage?
Q & A WITH GEORGE AND COURTNEY
Q: Ten years? Ten years! Why was this film a decade in the making and how
much different would it be if you just slapped together a year in the life
piece?
George: When we started this project we were a couple of twenty-something
kids essentially. I had never had a job in the television industry, Courtney
had never published any photos in a substantial publication– but we knew
that this project was something we needed to do.
It was not until the end of 2007 that I was at a level as a filmmaker where
I could finally see the story. I have produced and edited dozens of hours
for network and cable TV and this project was by far the most challenging–
technically, creatively and spiritually. And it meant throwing away
thousands of dollars in interviews with experts who ultimately did not fit
the story.
Courtney: Five years ago, it would have been a film about “the struggles
that people with disabilities have to overcome.” Ten years later, the film
is less about what “people with disabilities” have to overcome and more a
film about struggles “people” have to overcome. The disability part is
secondary.
It also took George about 10 years to convince me to be interviewed for the
film. I was pretty adamant about not being a main character. After looking
at every minute of our 250 hours of footage — and having time and life
experiences to give me a little perspective — I realized that George was
right. I was the person that needed to lead the viewer into the story.
As one viewer said at our first test screening, “I started to have heart
palpitations when I realized I was going to have to watch a film about
people with disabilities. I didn’t think I could handle it.” But she added
that she felt she could lean on me as a character to help guide her through
this world. She initially felt that she could relate to me better than she
could to someone with a significant disability.
Q: Were you married when the production began? How did you meet?
Courtney: We were not married when this all started. We were dating and
living together in a rundown old rent-controlled apartment in Inman Square
in Cambridge. We were in between a construction company and Kentucky Fried
Chicken. I believe that we both knew then that we were in this for the long
haul.
We met one quiet Halloween night in a house at the end of a dirt road in
Camden, Maine, where I was attending photography school. To make a long
story short, my friend and I were both doing work when the phone rang. My
friend’s boyfriend, a writer for the local newspaper, answered the phone. It
was the police calling to alert us that there was an escaped convict who had
been spotted on Sherman’s Point. The next thing we saw was a man dressed as
a ‘burglar’ jump in and proceed to engage in a poorly choreographed fight
with my friend’s boyfriend. The fight was so unconvincing that the dog
didn’t even move its head off the floor. Then suddenly, the side door
opened, smoke blew in, and in stepped Batman (to save the day we assumed).
This masked man…Batman… or George… was the man I would, 7 years later, call
my husband.
Q: Did the cameras ever interfere with your married life? Did any conflicts
ever arise over privacy?
Courtney: I don’t think the cameras ever really interfered with our
marriage. If anything, our cameras were what brought us together. We were
both so passionate about film and photography and about telling people’s
stories that we seemed to understand what the other one was trying to do. We
were both drawn to the same types of people - people who were quirky and
very different from us — and I think we both felt that there was a little
wisdom in everyone.
George: Luckily, Courtney is a very open person and was used to the idea
that if you want your subjects to reveal themselves, you need to be able to
reveal yourself as well. She has very little ego in this regard and that was
one of her great strengths as she collected these hundreds of hours of
brutally real footage, pimples and all… But at the end of the day, people
have walked out of this movie raving to me about how gorgeous she is —
usually with no makeup and certainly no posturing for the camera. What that
tells me is that the truth is the most beautiful thing of all, and is
certainly right in line with the thesis of ‘Shooting Beauty.’
Q: Do you see each other or yourselves in a different way since finishing
the film?
George: Whenever you try to encapsulate a person in a documentary, it’s
essentially like trying to explain, say, the United States in a five line
haiku. You have to pick an angle and focus on that. The angle I picked with
Courtney’s character was to reveal/rediscover the woman I fell in love with.
As we have gone through life’s ups and downs, kids, houses, financial
worries etc., her character in this movie has served as a sort of lighthouse
on the shore of sanity — sending out a beacon to remind me, when the seas
are stormy, why I chose this (wonderful) woman to spend the rest of my life
with.
Courtney: I feel like I’m able to mentally remove myself from the film and
actually look at it fairly objectively. I think it’s fun to engage with
viewers in discussions on all the characters in the film including my own.
Although I don’t think I would have been able to do this five years ago.
I believe that a photographer doesn’t have the right to take someone else’s
image until they truly understand what it’s like to feel vulnerable in front
of a camera. Therefore, I’ve forced myself to be in front of the camera
whether I like it or not.
===============
Dawna Lee Rumball, Doctoral Student
President-Elect, Canadian Disability Studies Association /
Association Canadienne des Études sur l'Incapacité
Department of Educational Studies
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web-site: http://www.cdsa-acei.ca/
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