Fred Camper's 'Suicide Note' Resurfaces at New York Film Festival

By Marcus Bennett

A film shot in New York between 1976 and 1984 received what was technically its world premiere at this year's New York Film Festival. Fred Camper's Suicide Note, restored on 16mm by the Chicago Film Society, showed at the festival roughly half a century after the artist began work on it.

The film has been exhibited only a handful of times since its completion. Its few previous screenings used workprints, which makes the NYFF presentation the first proper unveiling of the finished object. The restoration remains on 16mm film rather than a digital transfer, a choice that preserves the material Camper shot.

Where does the film come from?

Camper, an artist, filmmaker and critic, has described the work in starkly personal terms. Suicide Note, he said, was "born out of an intense personal despair, and a desire to depict a failure of the self."

The film grew from three linked griefs: the suicide of Camper's stepfather, his own struggle with depression, and what he saw as the broader symbolic suicide of the human race.

The critic's account of the piece has struck readers who know the terrain. The original review describes a specific feeling, easy to recognize emotionally but hard to put into words, about pushing through the numbness of depression to simply live an everyday life. The writer states plainly: "I'm writing these words amidst such a period."

That candor frames the film's subject. Camper's footage of 1970s and 1980s New York becomes a record of solitary consciousness moving through the city, and the restoration now gives new audiences a chance to experience a work that has spent decades in near-total obscurity.

What does the restoration change?

It changes access. Before this year, Suicide Note existed for most viewers as a rumor, screened rarely and never from a finished print. The Chicago Film Society's 16mm restoration, presented at NYFF, pulls the film out of what the review calls its "quasi-cryptid past."

The New York Film Festival screening marks the first time general audiences could see the film in its completed form, and it positions Suicide Note within the current reappraisal of American experimental film of the 1970s and 1980s.

Whether further screenings follow will depend on the film's new visibility. For a work that waited fifty years for its true premiere, the restoration is itself the story.

Editor's note: This story contains mentions of self-harm. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.