Tarnation

Tarnation (2003) is Jonathan Caouette's documentary you can watch online on iFILM. The director cut a self-portrait out of nineteen years of his own life.

He stitched it together from Super-8 reels, answering-machine tapes, home video and early short films. At its center is his mother, Renee Leblanc, sent to a psychiatric hospital by her own parents when she was still young. The camera tracks her illness, his childhood, his partner David and a family quietly coming apart over decades.

Made for almost nothing and edited on a home computer, it became a landmark of early-2000s indie documentary. Caouette never pleads his case or explains himself. He just shows you, and that rawness is hard to look away from. Stream Tarnation (2003) online on iFILM.