Art for Teachers of Children

Art for Teachers of Children

feminist, woman filmmaker, experimental documentary, sexuality,

Gift from filmmaker. I knew Jennifer in the early 90s and taught this important film at that time. The interaction between experimental filmmaking and documentary in her work is compelling.

1995

VHS

Experimental documentary

Jennifer, an intelligent but insecure 14-year-old student at a boarding school, seduces her married dormitory counselor, a photographer who has offered to teach her about his art and winds up shooting her in the nude. She is naive, and he manipulates her into an affair that eventually is discovered. Years later, as the photographer is being investigated by the FBI, the adult woman remembers her first love as a case of herself watching the artist who watched her.

""Art," "teachers" and "children" are all loaded words, and Jennifer Montgomery's coolly ruminative film about adolescent sexuality explores their meaning. Art for Teachers of Children is Ms. Montgomery's autobiographical, sexually frank account of a high school student who has an affair with a married teacher. The film examines the dynamics of seduction, exploitation and power as it brings this relationship to light."

– Janet Maslin, The New York Times

82 min

16 mm

82 min

Jennifer Montgomery

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