Book Report
film and single channel video installation
TRT 13:33

Book Report explores sexual assault, the weaponization of language, and the futility of escape.  It combines short sequences of Mad Men’s Don Draper reading books and relevant facts about the 2016 presidential campaign—including a history of the hashtag #trumpbookreport and notes on a payment to the mysteriously named “Draper Sterling” ad agency. A choral voice-over, drawn from the infamous Access Hollywood transcript, revises the misogynist “locker room talk,” turning it against the original speaker. In the Mad Men sequences, Draper’s reading is always interrupted, as though his efforts to be elsewhere are doomed. Mysterious, specimen-like images intervene in the scenes of reading, providing both commentary and a vivid index of Draper’s immersion. The text and voiceover create a tense counterpoint: Draper reads and viewers are invited to read over his shoulder, but with little patience for literature, facts, or civility.

Project/Exhibition dates

True/False Film Festival, Columbia, MO, Mar 2017
Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, United Kingdom, Nov 2017
Inspired by Ideas : Film night, Makerversity, London, Nov 2017
Other Cinema: New Experimental Works, San Francisco, CA, Dec 2017
Bucharest Short Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania, Dec 2017
Borderline Art Collective, San Francisco, CA, May 2018
San Francisco Frozen Film Festival, Jul 2018
Program Two: Jeanne C. Finley, Part of No Time to Rest! Film Series, SFMoMA, Nov 2020
ULTRAcinema XIII, Cuernavaca, Mexico, Oct 2025

See project on FilmFreeway.