Jonathan Caouette

Jonathan Caouette is an openly gay American filmmaker known for Tarnation (2003), an extraordinary autobiographical documentary constructed from decades of home movies, answering machine recordings, photographs, and super-8 footage that he assembled using iMovie on a borrowed computer — the film reportedly cost $218 to make and premiered at Sundance to enormous acclaim. Tarnation is a raw, hallucinatory portrait of growing up queer, mentally ill, and poor in Texas, and of his relationship with his schizophrenic mother. The film was picked up by Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell for distribution.