Leigh Ledare

A film directed by Ledare during a three-day conference that he organized in Chicago that was structured according to the Tavistock method—a project that involved recruiting 30 participants, securing the collaboration of 10 psychologists trained in the method, and directing a film crew. Complex patterns of stereotyping and other projections of identity emerge through the participants’ discussions; authority is questioned, assumed, and taken away; and viewers are implicated as the participants become aware of subjective forces that exist beyond the imposed boundaries of the conference system.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.