Los Angeles Film Festival

Marwencol

(USA, 2010, 83 mins, HDCAM - 29.97)

Producers: Jeff Malmberg, Tom Putnam, Matt Radecki, Chris Shellen, Kevin Walsh
Cinematographer: Jeff Malmberg
Editor: Jeff Malmberg
Cast: Mark Hogancamp

Four years in the making, Jeff Malmberg’s astonishing documentary questions issues of personal identity through one man’s amazing tale of self-rediscovery. Nine days after being brutally beaten unconscious by a group of teenagers in a bar fight, Mark Hogancamp awoke with virtually no memory of his previous life. Hogancamp looked to his old journals, drawings, and photographs to discover who he was, but they painted a picture of a man who was lost in life—a man that Hogancamp didn’t want to be. Instead, he turned inward and found therapy through building Marwencol, a 1/6th scale model of an imaginary WWII Belgian village, in the backyard of his upstate New York home.

As he lovingly crafts this universe of his dreams, he documents the life stories of its action figure and Barbie doll inhabitants, some of which represent his real-life acquaintances. When a local artist discovers Mark and his Marwencol photographs, the art world comes calling, and Hogancamp must decide if he’s ready to reveal himself to the world of strangers he retreated from so many years ago.

Jennifer Wilson

Expected to attend: Jeff Malmberg.

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