Episode # 209: Stranger With A Camera

“A provocative moral inquiry but also a vivid portrait of a place and time.” – The New York Times

“A quietly incisive and sublime examination of media power… Top of the List.” – Booklist

"This provocative, troubling film about an almost forgotten tragedy will arouse conflicting emotions, but it's a perceptive meditation on our eternal ambivalence about our relationship with the media." -- Library Journal

Synopsis: An encore presentation, Stranger with a Camera is an award-winning exploration of the relationship between media makers and the communities they portray in their work.

Full Description: In 1967 Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor visited the mountains of Central Appalachia to document poverty. A local landlord, who resented the presence of filmmakers on his property, shot and killed O'Connor, in part because of his anger over the media images of Appalachia that had become icons in the nation's War on Poverty. Filmmaker Elizabeth Barret, a native of Appalachia, uses O'Connor's death as a lens to explore the complex relationship between those who make films to promote social change and the people whose lives are represented in such media depictions. Through first-person accounts of the killing and the perspective of three decades of reflection, Stranger With A Camera leads viewers on a quest for understanding - a quest that ultimately leads Barret to examine her own role as both a maker of media and a member of the Appalachian community she portrays.

Website: www.appalshop.org/stranger

A co-production of Appalshop with KET, the Kentucky Network, in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS), with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Southern Humanities Media Fund, Soros Documentary Fund, Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kentucky Arts Council, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, American Documentary, Inc., Kentucky Humanities Council, The Ford Foundation, Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Palmer Foundation, Women in Film, Edie & Barry Bingham, Jr., and Elizabeth Ann Puleston.

Producer -- Elizabeth Barret: After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1973, this Hazard, Kentucky native joined Appalshop as a student in the Appalachian Educational Media Program. At Appalshop Elizabeth Barret has pursued an abiding interest in the history, culture, and people of Appalachia. A 1997-98 recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship, Elizabeth’s documentary Stranger With A Camera premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2000, and in 2002 received the John E. O’Connor Award from the American Historical Association, recognizing outstanding interpretations of history in film and video. Other documentaries by Elizabeth include Long Journey Home and Coal Mining Women. Historian Judi Jennings served as co-producer.

Background material, resources, and a teaching guide are available at these sites:
www.itvs.org/strangerwithacamera
www.pbs.org/pov/pov2000/strangerwithacamera

Screening Highlights ** Sundance Film Festival * San Francisco International Film Festival - Golden Gate Award * DoubleTake Documentary Festival * Museum of Modern Art * Hot Docs/Canadian International Documentary Festival * Taos Talking Picture Festival

Click here for zipped package of these print quality photos.

filming for Stranger with a Camera

Elizabeth Barret questions her role as a filmmaker in Stranger with a Camera (photo by John Perkins)

Triptych depicting Hugh O’Connor, Elizabeth Barret, and Hobart Ison

Photos for press and private use. All rights reserved. Production photos by Hans Luxenburger.