The Gloria of your Imagination

Sixty years ago, a 30-year-old waitress and single mother, was persuaded to engage in psychotherapy sessions on film, with three of the most influential Theorist-Psychologists of the 20th century. Reeves newest dual-projection film breaks down and expands this widely viewed work “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy” with an intricate superimposed montage of scenes from Gloria’s unguarded sessions and numerous film artifacts of her lifetime: newsreels, home movies, commercials, a beauty pageant, cold war propaganda, and educational films from the 1930s-1970s.

Sixty years ago, a 30-year-old waitress and single mother, was persuaded to engage in psychotherapy sessions on film, with three of the most influential Theorist-Psychologists of the 20th century. Reeves' latest feature breaks down and expands the seminal film series Three Approaches to Psychotherapy with an intricate superimposed montage consisting of material from Gloria’s unguarded sessions and numerous film artifacts of her lifetime: newsreels, home movies, commercials, a beauty pageant, cold war propaganda, and educational films from the 1930s-1970s.

The Gloria of your Imagination immerses audience members in an unabashed patriarchal, nationalistic era which many U.S. conservatives are working tirelessly to recreate. Social and legal limitations of that era, which formed Gloria and the struggles of her generation, remain unacknowledged in the sessions. While the therapists seem progressively non-judgmental about Gloria’s active sex life, there is no mention that contraceptives are actually illegal for her to take. Reeves’ original intertitle script fills in missing context and introduces Gloria’s greater life and self: from her Polish-Catholic upbringing to marriage straight from high school to an ever-evolving single parent on a spiritual journey, living by her own principles, until an untimely death at 45 years of age.

  • Jennifer T Reeves
    Director
  • Jennifer Reeves
    Writer
  • Randy Sterns
    Producer
    The Time We Killed
  • Elliott Sharp
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 38 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    October 1, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    3:2
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Berkeley Museum of Art, Pacific Film Archive
    Berkeley
    United States
    October 2, 2024
    World Premiere
    Special Filmmaker performance3
  • Science New Wave Festival
    New York
    United States
    October 23, 2024
    East Coast Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Light Matter Film Festival
    Alfred, NY
    United States
    November 2, 2024
Distribution Information
  • Sparky Pictures, Inc
    Distributor
    Country: United States
    Rights: Theatrical
Director Biography - Jennifer T Reeves

BIOGRAPHY

New York-based film artist Jennifer Reeves (b. 1971, Sri Lanka) has independently made 25+ film-works to date, from avant-garde shorts to multiple projection performances with live music, and experimental features. Reeves’ visceral 16mm film works immerse viewers in intricate, unfamiliar cinematic territory. They investigate themes of mental health and recovery, feminism and sexuality, and the beauty and decay of the natural world.

Reeves premiered her dual-projection film THE GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION (97 min) at Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive in October 2024. With support from residencies at Atelier 105 in Paris and Yaddo in New York, Reeves wrote, directed, edited and sound designed this one-of-a-kind experimental documentary. Reeves has also completed shooting her in-progress YANQUIS GO SOUTH, an experimental feature supported by a Princess Grace Awards Special Project grant.

Since 1992, Reeves’ acclaimed work has been screened extensively, from the Berlinale, Curtas Vila do Conde, Sundance and Science New Wave Film Festivals, to the Museum of Modern Art and numerous art cinemas and universities worldwide. Reeves started making films in 1990, and has been doing her own writing, cinematography, editing and sound design ever since. Her works expand the boundaries of cinematic expression through optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques. For many of her projects, Reeves has collaborated with celebrated composers including Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp and Zeena Parkins. Her feature-length 16mm dual-projection WHEN IT WAS BLUE was performed live with composer, performer Skúli Sverrisson, at venues including Toronto International Film Festival, the Sydney Opera House, Berlinale, and RedCat in Los Angeles.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I tend to craft cinematic “encounters” akin to my fluid filmmaking process; one that encourages curiosity and a direct emotional experience which can expand an individual’s long held attitudes and perspectives. I convey my ideas and stories with direct raw images and provocative juxtapositions, but with an openness and ambiguity that invites reflection. As I compose montage elements in my work, I attempt to realize that delicate balance between sharing "enough" (compelling content, sound and imagery) to kindle intellectual, physical, and emotional engagement, without limiting or imposing what the film “means” or what a person is supposed to think or feel about the subjects within the film.

I aim to construct subjective experiences for audience members. Viewers of my new work of Creative Non-Fiction THE GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION, will respond in a multitude of ways related to their living knowledge and opinions, both to the original archival footage I have excavated, and how I have reframed and augmented it. Some viewers will zero in on Gloria; perhaps on cringe-worthy statements like “when someone is superior to me," or on the instances when she cuts through the B.S. of a domineering therapist. Gloria’s moments of emotional connection and recognition may emerge as the most affecting details for other viewers.

The subjects in my films have sprung from my urge to dig in, to explore and understand something that has affected me deeply, and to push the personal towards the shared aspects of culture, our world and the human condition. One motivating force behind making THE GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION was a desire to comprehend more acutely conditions of my mother’s generation, the lasting power of internalized sexism, and to develop greater empathy. Gloria, born a few years earlier than my mother, grew up with the same traditional values “shoved down her throat” as my mother would refer to her sex-role indoctrination at home, church and school, and through the seductive, glowing images she saw on the silver screen. Reproductive rights, AKA the right of self-determination, didn’t exist for women when both Gloria and my mother reached their childbearing years.

My body of work is quite varied, as I have always felt the style and form of any film must reflect the content and meaning found within it. My film making strategies and techniques within THE GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION, are sometimes striking in their contrast, and they mimic the radically different three psychotherapy techniques the therapists demonstrate in the archival footage. My process of filmmaking dwells far from the world of traditional filmmaking practices; my editing process often happens simultaneously with shooting and scriptwriting. I am forever compelled to make films that surprise me, films that emerge as quite singular when the cinematic form it takes, echoes the meanings below the surface.