Jonathan Caouette
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GoFundMe Launches to Support Tarnation Director Jonathan Caouette’s Medical Expenses
Jonathan Caouette, the director whose breakthrough experimental personal doc Tarnation (2004) has proved both tremendously influential but never really matched in terms of formal inventiveness and emotional intensity, is facing significant health challenges, and friends and supporters have launched a GoFundMe to help. Marie Therese Guirgis, Stephen Winter, Brian Kates, John Cameron Mitchell, and Gus Van Sant are behind the fundraiser, which is currently just over midway to its $60,000 goal. Treatment is occurring abroad, and funds raised will go towards “crucial surgeries and medical care, his outstanding medical bills, and his living expenses while he undergoes this long and delicate process […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 11, 2023 -
All in the Family: Jonathan Caouette on Walk Away Renee
I’ve been struggling to find a metaphor for the very special, not to mention most unusual, connection between director Jonathan Caouette and Renee Leblanc, his mentally ill and frequently institutionalized mother and the subject of his most recent film, Walk Away Renee. The closest I could come is really a parallel, and it lies within Caouette’s body of work. In his 2010 surreal short All Flowers in Time, a beautiful young woman, played by Chloe Sevigny, has an indefinable relationship with an adolescent boy. In a bizarre world where young people’s eyes can turn glowing red, the two seem to […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jun 27, 2012 -
JONATHAN CAOUETTE’S “WALK AWAY RENEE” TO HAVE ONLINE PREMIERE
When discussing the lineup at the upcoming BAMcinemaFEST a while back, I noted that a new cut of Walk Away Renee, Jonathan Caouette’s long-awaited follow-up to Tarnation, would be playing as part of the festival on June 27. While that’s exciting news on its own, now comes word of a very savvy move by IFC to capitalize on the interest in the film by giving the film a simultaneous online premiere on SundanceNOW’s Doc Club, the SVOD (Subscriber Video-on-Demand) series curated by documentary maven Thom Powers. “Walk Away Renee makes a perfect headliner for the June [Doc Club] theme of […]
by Nick Dawson on May 18, 2012 -
Renew Media Celebrates 20 Years
Initially it might appear that filmmakers Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi) and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) have little in common with directors Kelly Reichardt or Rob Epstein. Caouette’s intensely self-referential experimental documentary footage or Reggio’s dreamlike visual-image essays differ considerably from Reichardt’s well-received narrative feature Old Joy or Epstein’s award-winning political documentaries. Behind the scenes, however, these filmmakers and nearly 500 more have obtained funding and support from the nonprofit organization Renew Media (formerly known as National Video Resources), established in 1990 by the Rockefeller Foundation to administer the annual Media Arts Fellowships. In 2003 Renew Media assumed full responsibility for managing the […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 10, 2007 -
PRODIGY
A debut feature 19 years in the making, Jonathan Caouette’s “brutal and spellbinding musical-docudrama” Tarnation premiered as a rough cut at Mix 2003 and screens in the Frontier section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. (Tarnation was substantially reedited following its debut at Mix, and is tipped for the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes following its screening in Park City.) As per the Mix Festival’s write-up: “Tarnation weaves a psychotronic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of ’80s camp pop culture and dramatic reenactments drawn from Caouette’s entire life.” “It’s kind […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2004
