SUITCASE OF LOVE AND SHAME

SUITCASE OF LOVE AND SHAME

    Price: $350.00

    Code: 2471

    Directed by Jane Gillooly
    2013, 70 minutes
    Purchase: $350
    Classroom rental: $125

    A forbidden love story played out in a decade that would soon spawn the sexual revolution, Suitcase of Love and Shame reconstructs a mesmerizing and erotic narrative from 60 hours of reel-to-reel audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay.

    In 1964, the couple, Tom and Jeannie, lived in different cities. Long distance phone calls were risky (Tom was married) and cost prohibitive, so instead they recorded audio letters to one another and sent them discreetly in the mail. The recordings were raw, intimate, and candid; innermost thoughts and desires, sexual indiscretions, juxtaposed with observations on the banality of their work and daily lives. They recorded everything. When they would meet in hotel rooms on business trips, they recorded themselves making love. The tapes memorialized their affair. They also captured all that was happening around them, the rich textural sounds of life in the Midwest in the 1960s: thunderstorms, telephones ringing, barking dogs, intercoms, even Bert Parks announcing the winner of the Miss America Pageant of 1965.

    Using vivid archival and present-day imagery to supplement the recordings, this fascinating documentary addresses the morals laws of 1960's America, the devastation of divorce, the effects of institutionalized sexism and the clandestine lives many adult Americans were forced to lead.

    In today's social media environment, where recording and sharing one's most personal and private moments is commonplace, it is striking to confront such a salacious and candid media example from a half a century ago. In the early 1960's, most people were not thinking about the impact and dissemination of recorded media, yet Tom and Jeannie documented their lives for the same reasons we do today. Quite unlike any other documentary, Suitcase of Love and Shame opens a remarkably rich dialogue about confession, exhibitionism, privacy and voyeurism.

    Subjects & Collections



    Festivals & Awards

    * Official Selection, Visions du Reel
    * Official Selection, The Art of the Real, Film Society of Lincoln Center
    * Official Selection, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
    * Official Selection, Traverse City Film Festival
    * Official Selection, CPH:DOX Film Festival
    * Official Selection, RIDM, Montreal Documentary Film Festival



    Reviews

    “Richly evocative... Alternately sweet, sad, and steamy.” – Boston Globe

    “The emotional impact of the film is a slow burn, building as it shifts poignantly between titillation, humor and tragedy. Just as Gilooly’s tender treatment recontextualizes the couple’s story from the tawdry affair it might have been on paper to an epic, if flawed, love story in its own right, so does it elevate the viewer from simple voyeur to empathetic participant.” - Filmmaker Magazine

    “Compelling and provocative. Recommended“ - Educational Media Reviews Online

    Trailer