CH-03. Imber’s Left Hand

USA, Feature Documentary, 2014, 74 min

This is a deeply moving film about celebrated painter Jon Imber’s darkly humorous response to a diagnosis of ALS. The film traces Imber’s adaptations, switching from his right to his left hand, and then to both hands as the condition worsens. He produces more than 100 paintings in the next three months. Imber knows his legacy will live on through his family, his art and among the students he taught over 27 years at Harvard. In one scene, though, he regrets to his wife, the painter Jill Hoy, that his religion, Judaism, had little to do with his life and work. ?But it’s the very root of what you are,? she replies. Imber now has a consolation: His newest abstract landscapes are stronger than anything he has ever painted in his life. And he knows it. (Jon Imber attended CU-Boulder.)