Please join us for a participatory screening of Brokeback Mountain at Mass Gallery on June 17. Seattle-based artist Natalie Woodlock has been organizing a screening tour of Ang Lee’s film, handing out handkerchiefs at the beginning of the movie, and afterwards asking viewers to write down the scenes that make them cry. She embroiders the names of each person who sheds tears on their handkerchief, and illustrates the scenes that bring viewers to tears for her artists’ book Tearjerker. 

When Brokeback Mountain was released in 2005, it immediately became a cultural touchstone. This film definitively summed up the pre-Stonewall era, quickly embedding itself within queer cultural memory. The participatory screenings and forthcoming artists’ book are works of sentimental collaboration, highlighting the connective possibility and collective power of popular film. By illustrating the scenes from Brokeback Mountain that bring viewers to tears, the artist hopes to memorialize the circle of sympathy present at each screening in the pages of each book. 

The artist will have prints for sale at the event, of scenes previous audiences have shed tears in. Handkerchiefs provided.