The often dramatic photographs taken of people who are arrested are the subject of a new Canadian documentary called Mugshot that premiered at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto on April 28th.
The 52-minute film shares the personal stories of people who collect mugshots, including artists, writers, art curators and gallery owners. They also show many photographs of ordinary and celebrity suspects like David Bowie and Frank Sinatra.
‘A fascination with looking at each other’
The mugshots are compelling. “I think we have a fascination with just looking at each other, comparing ourselves to one another, trying to decide what’s in a face,” says Dennis Mohr, filmmaker and director of Mugshot.
Looking at the photos makes one ask oneself questions, he says. “‘Is that a bad-looking person,’ ‘am I guilty of that,’ ‘can I look like that or do that,’ ‘how do I not be you,’ that kind of question.”
Magazine devoted to mugshots inspired
Inspiration for the documentary came when Mohr was in the southern United States and he picked up a copy of a magazine called The Slammer, which is all about mugshots. He leafed through it and was drawn by the style of the photography and by the faces looking out from it.
He spent a year getting to know five of the main collectors, researching historical mugshots, exploring themes and ideas. He and a team put it all together with the support of TVOntario, a publicly-funded educational television station in the province of Ontario.
‘A thinking person’s film’
Reaction to the documentary has been very positive, says Mohr. “People probably go in there thinking they’re going to see a real romp of celebrity mugshots, and in fact it’s a little more of a thinking person’s film where we really try to tackle it from an arts and humanities-culture standpoint and I think we’ve done a very good job of that.
“I just wanted people to go away with more questions than (when) they came in, and I think that’s happening.”
Mugshot will be on TVOntario in the fall, and on Knowledge Network TV in the western province of British Columbia after that. Then it will screen on various stations in Europe starting with the public broadcaster in Sweden.
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