Gloria Szymanski

GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION immerses viewers in the fraught life of a recently divorced 30-year-old mother, the culture and events of her formative years, and the bewildering world of the mid-1960s psychotherapy office. Reeves re-works and subverts the first psychotherapy training film to ever present full, genuine sessions (THREE APPROACHES TO PSYCHOTHERAPY, 1965) through multiple-projection, montage with other found films of the time, and by undoing the linear narrative of the psychotherapy session. Reeves superimposes 16mm home movies from Gloria’s childhood and adolescence, newsreels, a brassiere commercial, a Miss America pageant, and educational films highlight the social conditions of the world and time of Gloria’s 30 years, acknowledged by only one of the therapists. The layered montage brings out the absurdity, humor, anger, and deep revelations that can come from baring one’s secrets to the experts.

An actual patient, Gloria Szymanski, allowed herself to be filmed while engaged in therapy with three different therapists, distinguished by their different orientations but sharing their therapeutic endeavors. Poster illustration by Kati Szilágyi.