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Interviews

'Walk Away Renee' Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette Talks Parallel Realities, A Possible Book, Making Personal Docs & More

By Christopher Bell
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June 29, 2012 5:03 PM
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News

Jonathan Caouette made a name for himself some years back with his debut feature "Tarnation," a manic, prodding look into his family, created on the cheap using home videos and the trusty iMovie program. His stock blew up, and a successful screening at the Sundance Film Festival eventually lead to him helming the "All Tomorrow's Parties" documentary and a personal horror short "All Flowers In Time."

By Christopher Bell
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June 27, 2012 12:09 PM
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Reviews

Born out of a truck load of home videos, answering machine recordings, and photographs, Jonathan Caouette's 2003 autobiographical "Tarnation" was a dearly personal and often frightening, no holds-barred look into a family torn apart by a tortured past. Cobbled together with iMovie before YouTube was even a twinkle in a vlogger's eye, the film bleeds honesty and its fearless look at the subjects (including the director himself) can be downright terrifying at times. But it wasn't just a family arguing or bitterly digging into old wounds -- Caouette had a manic, assaulting editing style and a penchant for some truly disturbing experimental sequences, an aesthetic that exhibited their emotional states in a fresh, genuinely perturbing way.

By Christopher Bell
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June 22, 2012 10:04 AM
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News

Back in 2003, Jonathan Caouette dug through years of home video and answering machine recordings to assemble his debut feature film, the incredibly intimate documentary “Tarnation.” Focusing on his his childhood and relationship with a schizophrenic mother (suffering from such disorders due to shock therapy), the movie was an intense punch to the gut, a frenetic autobiography that exposed a rather frightening and ugly side of family. After dabbling in other projects (including music festival doc "All Tomorrow's Parties" and the short film "All Flowers In Time" with Chloe Sevigny), Caouette has returned to the well with “Walk Away Renee,” a sequel which follows the director and his mother as they road trip to her new home in an New York-based assisted-living facility. Things are complicated after the duo discovers that most of the Renee’s medication has been lost and the prescriptions cannot be replenished until they reach her new home.