TEENAGE KICKS II: TarnationThursday 16th January 2014, 22.30
JONATHAN CAOUETTE “Tarnation”, US 2004, 88min
'I was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up mainly with my grandparents. My mother was treated with electroshocks in more than 20 hospitals against her mental illness. So at first, I grew up in asylums. Filmmaking became a kind of separation and escape for me. With the camera, I could bear life as a child. I used it as a weapon, as a shield, and to explore how I felt.'
The whole budget of this wildly edited debut film, consisting of Super8 snippets, photos, video diaries and answering machine messages, was 218 dollars and 32 cents. The result is a 'brilliant and devastating autobiographical documentary' (Gus van Sant: 'A milestone of cinema', film-dienst). 'Nobody pushed me in a direction. I literally taught myself filmmaking.' (Jonathan Caouette).
