Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, July 20: PACKED IN A TRUNK: THE LOST ART OF EDITH LAKE WILKINSON
Michelle Boyaner’s chronicle of a forgotten American artist had its premiere at Palm Springs at the beginning of the year. Screenings have followed at Provincetown, Frameline, and LGBT fests in Halifax, Kansas City, and Portland, among others.
The forgotten artist at the core of Boyaner’s scrappy doc is Edith Lake Wilkinson, a late 19th/early 20th century painter and printmaker whose career was cut short when she was committed to an asylum in 1924 by an unscrupulous attorney. Just as important to her story is Edith’s great-niece, Emmy-award winning writer/director Jane Anderson, who serves as the audience’s guide here, and whose obsession with Edith’s story has compelled her for four decades. When Jane was just a child, her mother discovered a trunk full of Edith’s canvases in the attic of a relative’s home in the artist’s native West Virginia and was given some of the work. Growing up surrounded by Edith’s paintings, Jane drew creative inspiration from the relative she never met, and, as she learned more about her, found eerie similarities to her own life. Chiefly, like Jane, Edith was a lesbian, with a longtime female companion, Fannie – a fact may have led to Edith’s institutionalization. Seeking to give her great-aunt her due, Jane partners with a gallery in Edith’s beloved Provincetown to stage an exhibition of her work, discovering curious details that cement her formative place in the venerable Cape Cod artist haven’s history. While the film never loses sight of its focus on Edith, Jane emerges as a feisty, genuine, and appealingly goofy presence, emotional and at times giddy at finally realizing her decades’ long mission. If there are some clunky bits – a visit with a psychic to try to fill in some blanks about how Edith ended up in her predicament, an overused folksy score that wears out its welcome quickly – Jane’s welcome presence makes up for it.
what (not) to doc 