Small Town Secrets

In this short, impressionistic film, director Katherine Leggett converses with her parents via webcam and narrates against a backdrop of home movie footage and still images of her family life in the small town of Stoughton, WI. Although the webcam connection is a bit choppy—making clear communication difficult initially—this turns out to be a perfect metaphor for Leggett's upbringing during the 1980s as the daughter of parents who both had secret lives. Leggett, who struggled with the fact that her father and her mother were gay (“not both!” she recalls feeling), explores their relationship (which ended in divorce) and her own feelings, telling her father that she denied accusations about her parents' sexuality from teasing friends (he muses, “We were all in the closet.”). What makes Small Town Secrets such a powerful little film is the fact that the Leggetts are not hurling accusations at one another Jerry Springer-style (in fact, Leggett's father talks about how he idolized her mother), but instead are opening honest doors of communication (unlike, say, the secret door that Leggett's mother had installed in a duplex between her bedroom and her neighbor/lover Margot's bedroom). Winner of a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, this beautiful, thought-provoking piece is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)