Jonathan Caouette

Jonathan Caouette is an openly gay American filmmaker known for Tarnation (2003), an extraordinary autobiographical documentary constructed from more than two decades of home movies, answering-machine recordings, photographs, and Super 8 footage that he edited using iMovie on a borrowed computer -- the film reportedly cost just $218 to make. Tarnation is a raw, hallucinatory portrait of growing up queer and poor in Houston, and of his relationship with his mother, Renee LeBlanc, whose mental illness was treated with electroshock therapy in her youth. Screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, the film received a standing ovation lasting nearly ten minutes, reducing Caouette to tears, and it went on to be picked up for distribution by Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell. Caouette has continued to make personal, formally experimental documentary work exploring memory, family, and queer identity.