Join us Monday, April 6th at 7:00 p.m. for a special event screening of a soul-stirring documentary about a photographer and filmmaker who tries to piece together an intimate portrait of the mother she never knew!
Admission is FREE – Tickets are required*
*Tickets will be available in-person in our lobby leading up to and on the evening of the event
This event will include a post-show discussion with filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed
About the film
A Photographic Memory is an intimate, genre-bending portrait of a daughter’s attempt to piece together a picture of her mother, an avant-garde journalist she never knew. Uncovering the vast archive Sheila Turner Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Model, and others, the film explores memory, legacy, and stories left untold.
Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed was only 18 months old when her mother, renowned journalist Sheila Turner Seed, unexpectedly passed away. Driven by a desire to uncover what she left behind, Seed embarks on a journey to meet with people whose lives were touched by her mother. Using audio and photographic archives from her mother’s career, A Photographic Memory is an investigation into the archive in search of remnants of a loved one, reconstructing their image in an attempt to get to know them. Sheila’s intimate interviews with famous photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Lisette Model and Bruce Davidson, among others, are brought to life via Rachel’s re-imaginings, further immersing us into Sheila’s world as mother and daughter’s worlds merge in unexpected ways.
About the speaker
Originally from London, Rachel Elizabeth Seed is an LA-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography, and writing. Her debut feature film A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY is a New York Times Critic’s Pick and was called “one of the best docs of the year” by RogerEbert.com. It was awarded a 2025 Truer Than Fiction Spirit Award and was nominated for a 2025 Cinema Eye Honors Award.
Rachel’s work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Pictures, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Jewish Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, and the IFP/Gotham Labs, among others. Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries including Sacred by Academy-Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon.
Rachel is co-founder and executive director of the Brooklyn Documentary Club, a thriving NYC film collective with more than 300 members.
This event was made possible through sponsorship from the Ohio University School of VisCom, the Scripps College of Communication, and the Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts
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87 MIN
Nerissa Young is a professor of instruction in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. She grew up on a family farm in southern West Virginia. In her classes, Young frequently discusses the effects of stereotypes in news and advertising and the traumatic effects of “isms” in different cultures. She grew up watching the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard” and will discuss the show’s significance — its popularity led to the feature film — as a bridge between the rural comedies and films of the 1950s and 1960s and the smarter rural series and films of the 1980s up to the present. She agrees with a statement she once heard, “Just because we talk slow doesn’t mean we are.”
