TaosFF Special Sneak Peak Preview

A Photographic Memory 

w/post film Director Q & A 

MON, April 13, 7pm

Category: Documentary Feature

2024 | Documentary | Directed by Rachel Elizabeth Seed | 1h 27m | NR

Featuring post screening Q&A with director Rachel Elizabeth Seed.

Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards and a New York Times Critic’s Pick, A Photographic Memory is an intimate, genre-bending portrait of the filmmaker’s trailblazing mother, Sheila Turner Seed – a vibrant and pioneering journalist, photographer, and filmmaker, who died suddenly and tragically when Rachel was just 18 months old. Uncovering the vast archive Turner Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Cecil Beaton, Lisette Model, and Gordon Parks, and others, Rachel attempts to build a posthumous relationship with her mother through her interviews, photographs, journals, films, and the stories of those who remember her. The result is an unlikely mother-daughter conversation that evades time and space, exploring universal themes of memory, loss, and legacy.

“This poetic gem is a journey from the weight of absence to the serenity of presence, thanks in no small part to the inquisitive, gifted woman pulled from obscurity: Sheila Turner-Seed, whose life was short but full and worth revitalizing.” – Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“Without playing with anyone’s life, “A Photographic Memory” makes beautiful sense of the connections between mother and daughter, work and love and other mysteries.”

• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Rachel Elizabeth Seed, DIRECTOR/PRODUCER – 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 YorkTimesCritic’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 camera person 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.

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