“ A photographic memory ” Documents the search for a girl for her mother

The voice on the recordings is soft, curious, wise. “As much”, a person describes it.

It is the voice of photographer and writer Sheila Turner-Seed, interviewing some of the greatest photographers of 20^th Century – Henri Cartier -Bresson, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Bruce Davidson, Cornell Capa, W. Eugene Smith and Roman Vishniac. The conversations were recorded for the exhibition “Images de l’Homme” that Turner-Seed created before his premature death in 1979 at the age of 42.

There is another voice on these cassettes, in the background-the sounds of a one year old baby or roughly, the daughter of Turner-Seed, Rachel. Decades after the death of his mother, Seed discovered these recordings and put them at the heart of a documentary, A photographic memoryA film that can also be described as sweet, curious and wise.

For the filmmaker, recordings have become an intimate means “to know that I had a good link with my mother,” she said on the deadline. “Whether he was lost by the fault of a person or not by his desire.”

Sheila Turner-Seed died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving Rachel to be raised by a loving father, Brian Seed, also a renowned photographer. Before finding the audio tapes, Rachel had little palpable evidence of the mother-daughter relationship, beyond a photograph of Sheila holding the young Rachel in her arms.

“This image may be the only image I remember or remember the house,” she recalls, but she adds: “I couldn’t see myself logically like this baby … I don’t remember this moment. So I don’t quite bond.

A photographic memory Play this weekend at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles. From June 20 to 26, the Gene Siskel Film Center is played in Chicago, and on June 27, the screening in New York begins, with a national deployment to follow throughout the summer. The film won the film Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award, as well as Best Film and the City and State Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and was nominated for prizes at the Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland, the Miami Film Festival, the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Spotlight Award of Cinema Eye Honors.

The documentary takes place as a connection or reconnection trip. In voiceover in the film, Rachel asks his mother: “How could I know myself if I didn’t know you?”

“This is identity. This is the kind of nuance of who am I, who is my mother? ” she explains. “Can I intervene in his shoes?” Will it bring me closer to her? I think it was part of the story. ”

The film contains parts of the magazines of Sheila Turner -Seed Lues in what looks like her own voice – consistent with that heard on audio recordings. And yet, it’s not Sheila but her daughter expressing words.

“It was a decision to which I arrived after a lot of reflection,” observes Seed. “We were going to hire an actor at some point.

The spectator will have the impression of being present for the interview sessions between Turner-Seed, Henri-Cartier-Breton, Gordon Parks and the other famous photographers heard on recordings. This is done thanks to leisure that seems remarkably authentic.

“My DP was a scary genius,” enthuses the director. “It is one of my closest friends, lives in England. I only used it for leisure filming, and he had never done that before; He is a photographer still in profession. We all pulled them in an apartment in Los Angeles and he was just able to view these moments. ”

Without being explicitly indicated, it becomes clear that Rachel plays his mother in recreation.

“It’s as if I have haunted his life,” thinks about Seed. “It’s a bit like I was the ghost in the future to go to the past.”

Seed says that a documentary purist protested that she should have told the spectator – by SMS on the screen? – That it was in the role of her mother. The filmmaker concluded that she did not violate any unwritten rule of the form of non-fiction.

“These are my inner world and my experience. It is therefore subjective and it can really be anything, ”she notes. “I think that once I kissed this, I felt as long as it was authentic, it could be a documentary.”

Seed says that his biggest challenge was not to play his mother, but another aspect of the cinema process.

“What was really difficult for me was writing the narration and recording it. It was the most difficult part for me emotionally, ”she shares. “As a writer, it made me realize how much I was out of contact with my own feelings. I had to get in touch with them to be able to finish the film. And I didn’t really want to; it was like a very difficult job. It was like forced this dungeon of feelings to which I had to access. It was something that I did not expect when I started.”

At one point in the film, Seed uses her mother’s interviews to create the feeling that the mother and daughter are in dialogue with each other through time.

“There was an alchemy that happened where it sounds, in terms of tone, we are talking about it in fact,” she says. “A part of me has the impression of having been able to make a whole film like that in a more experimental way, but I think that I needed that this film is a little more anchored so that people can follow the story.”

Seed continues: “I was not a filmmaker when I started to do it … I think what inspired me to make it a film was that it looked like this three -dimensional travel experience inspired by all these visuals and writing. Everything seemed so visceral. And I want it to be as great and accessible as possible.”