HOME WHEN YOU RETURN a film by CARL ELSAESSER

HOME WHEN YOU RETURN a film by CARL ELSAESSER. 2021, USA, 30 min. A ghostly melodrama that gently blends the artist’s grandmother with an amateur filmmaker. While Carl Elsaesser was teaching filmmaking at Carleton College, he discovered the 1950s melodramas of amateur director Joan Thurber Baldwin. Although they were technically uneven, he was inspired by the films’ “palpable energy” and their backdrop of northern Maine, where he grew up. In Home When You Return, his New York Film Festival and Berlinale Forum Expanded selection, Elsaesser gently reanimates Baldwin’s movies to bid farewell to his grandmother.