November/December 2000  (Vol. 15, Issue 6)

Stranger with a Camera
(2000) 62 min. $195: colleges & universities; $49.95: high schools & public libraries. California Newsreel. PPR. Color cover.
On September 24, 1967, Hobart Ison, a Letcher County, KY property owner, shot and killed Hugh O'Connor, a National Film Board of Canada filmmaker who happened to be on Ison's property filming one of Ison's renters, Mason Eldridge. To our eyes, the images of the begrimed coal miner Eldridge playing with his young daughter on the porch of their ramshackle abode look very familiar indeed: during the '60s when Johnson's War on Poverty was in full swing, the media provided a steady stream of still and moving pictures of the economically downtrodden of Eastern Kentucky. Over 30 years later Kentucky filmmaker Elizabeth Barret revisits this haunting episode, exploring "the difference between how people see their own place, and how others represent it." Combining interviews with several principals, including Eldridge, relatives of both Ison and O'Connor (the scenes with O'Connor's daughter Ann are particularly heartrending), the attorney for Ison during the trial (who, railing against the do-gooders who would reveal Kentucky's problems to the rest of world, bitterly/proudly reminds viewers "that misplaced attitude of 'save the aborigines' is as old as the hills"), and members of the NFB crew who were with O'Connor when he was shot, the film also includes revealing archival clips, as reporters (such as Charles Kuralt) and politicians (including Bobby Kennedy) descended on rural Kentucky for a variety of reasons, some humane, some exploitative. As Barret reminds us, in incisive overlaid narration written by novelist Fenton Johnson, "media images can bring out powerful and conflicting emotions." She never suggests that O'Connor's murder was anything but murder (Ison would be sentenced to a 10-year prison term and paroled after the first year); still, she raises questions (even more important today than in 1967) regarding the responsibilities of filmmakers and the horrific aftermath of the public shaming of a community. One of the finest documentaries of the year. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)