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Tarnation

Directed by Jonathan Caouette.
US, 2004, color, 88 min.

Jonathan Caouette leaves no stone unturned in his iMac produced debut feature. A dizzying mix of Super-8 home movies, photo booth snapshots, video diaries, answering machine messages, the film is an often harrowing portrait of the growing dysfunction within the young director’s family. Featuring dramatic scenes of his mother’s breakdown and his grandmother’s stroke, the film’s most compelling footage is of Caouette himself performing in drag as a child and participating in a high school musical rendition of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

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