Special Guests: Elizabeth Barret, Lucy Masie Phenix, and Gurney Norman

In 1967, Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor was shot dead as he stepped onto the property of landowner Hobart Ison. O'Connor was one of an influx of filmmakers who had come to rural Kentucky looking for picture-perfect poverty. Was O'Connor trespassing on more than real estate? Was Ison a homegrown hero? Thirty years later, the story of this unresolved crime still haunted Elizabeth Barret, a filmmaker born and raised in the region. For Barret this unsettling incident brought to the fore questions concerning media images and the power they wield over personal and cultural identity. In interviews she conducted with local residents, including some of the original subjects of O'Connor's film, the principal explanation offered was a deep-seated resentment at being used to depict destitution. By delving into her own middle-class upbringing in Hazard, Kentucky, Barret adds colorful complexity to a picture that tends toward the black-and-white of coal dust. Stranger with a Camera compassionately examines the media's responsibility to make images without trampling values and virtues. "Can filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people [they] portray?" Barret asks. Or is there a natural poverty of portrayal?

—Steve Seid

• Editor Lucy Masie Phenix, a Bay Area filmmaker, is herself a Kentuckian. Gurney Norman is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and has published several books of fiction about life in Appalachia, including the award-winning Kinfolks.Voiceover written by Fenton Johnson. Photographed by Peter Pearce, Martin Duckworth. Edited by Lucy Massie Phenix. (61 mins) (Total running time: 93 mins, Beta SP, From Appalshop)

Preceded by:

Woodrow Cornett: Letcher County Butcher (Bill Richardson, U.S., 1971). The very first Appalshop production observes an old-time rural butcher as he makes quick business of a whole hog. Ashland Fouts on harmonica and commentary by his son-in-law Frank Majority make this a lean and authentic likeness. (9:38 mins) Chairmaker (Rick DiClemente, U.S., 1975). A pristine portrait of 80-year-old Dewey Thompson, from Sugarloaf Hollow, who has been carving rough-hewn rocking chairs for decades. His simple insights are as sharp as his carving tools. (22 mins)