A Photographic Memory, with filmmaker Rachel Seed in person | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

A Photographic Memory, with filmmaker Rachel Seed in person

Arts + Literature Laboratory and FlakPhoto present the documentary A Photographic Memory with director Rachel Seed in person on Monday, June 23 at 7:00pm. Free admission, donations appreciated.

A Photographic Memory | Rachel Seed | USA | 2024 | 85 minutes

Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards and a New York Times Critic’s Pick, A Photographic Memory is an intimate, genre-bending portrait of the filmmaker’s trailblazing mother, Sheila Turner Seed – a vibrant and pioneering journalist, photographer, and filmmaker, who died suddenly and tragically when Rachel was just 18 months old. Uncovering the vast archive Turner Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Cecil Beaton, Lisette Model, and Gordon Parks, and others, Rachel attempts to build a posthumous relationship with her mother through her interviews, photographs, journals, films, and the stories of those who remember her. The result is an unlikely mother-daughter conversation that evades time and space, exploring universal themes of memory, loss, and legacy. (Zeitgiest Films)

Director Rachel Seed will be present and will hold a Q&A session after the screening. Special thanks to Andy Adams at FlakPhoto for making this screening possible. Film running time is 85 minutes. 

 

Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Reed

Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a Brooklyn and Los Angeles-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography and writing. She is a 2022 Jewish Film Institute fellow, a 2021 California Film Institute fellow and Jewish Story Partners grantee, a 2020 Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Pictures, NYFA New York Women’s Film Fund fellow, and a 2019 Sundance Edit & Story Lab fellow and Sundance Documentary Fund recipient for her feature documentary, A Photographic Memory. Rachel’s work has also been supported by Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Maine Media Workshops, the Roy W. Dean grant, and IFP. 

Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography was included in the International Center of Photography’s exhibit on Hurricane Sandy, Rising Waters, and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries including Sacred by Academy-Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon. Rachel’s writing has... Read More

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Update: Our galleries will have limited hours on Saturday, June 14, 2025: 12:00pm to 2:30pm. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

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