Mariah Garnett

Trouble

Mariah Garnett

Mariah Garnett’s intimate and inventive biographical portrait of her artist father recounts in his own words his past as a political activist in Belfast and his daughter’s unlikely influence on his life. Through a combination of letters, interviews, archival footage, and uncanny reenactments of the period (featuring Garnett herself in the role of her father), this slyly self-reflexive yet deeply felt film provides crucial insights into his largely forgotten accomplishments and Ireland’s history of sociopolitical unrest, while also documenting the father and daughter’s belated reunion.

Garbage, The City, and Death

Mariah Garnett

Garbage, The City, And Death is an eight-minute, single-channel video. It consists of three scenes from a Fassbinder play of the same title, which was banned from the stage in Germany in 1985. Garnett's adaptation consists of the scenes between Roma, the prostitute and Franz, her boyfriend/pimp. Garnett plays Franz and her half-sister, Joanna Coleman, plays Roma. The couple bickers over money problems, her undying love for him, and his general disgust with her (produced by his latent homosexuality). The film moves from the city, where they are living in their car, to the Salton Sea, to a hot tub in the night. This project was born out of a month-long visit between long-lost sisters who did not grow up together. Garnett uses Fassbinder’s text as a means of exploring concepts relating to sibling-hood that do not exist in her actual relationship with her sister – it is an illustration of how Garnett imagines sisters might fight. Sibling rivalry is warped here into a lovers’ quarrel.

Encounters I May or May Not Have Had with Peter Berlin

Mariah Garnett

Peter Berlin

The film guides the viewer through the process of making contact with a figure who exists only in his own photographs—70’s gay sex icon Peter Berlin. The film is structured in three parts, which were made chronologically. In the first part, the filmmaker appropriates Peter Berlin’s outfits and poses, playfully attempting to embody Peter Berlin’s artistic persona. Each frame of the original 16mm film was then hand-painted to distort the image, producing an animated effect that prevents the viewer from seeing the full performing body. In the second part, a voice over relates a story riddled with anxiety about a potential meeting with Peter Berlin that is paired with images of mansions and window displays. The third and final section is an interview with Peter Berlin in his apartment, describing a moment of exchange that crosses lines of gender and generation, a moment where the identities of two filmmakers briefly coalesce.