Special Guests: Elizabeth Barret, Lucy Masie Phenix, and Gurney Norman

In 1967, Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor was shot dead as he stepped onto the property of landowner Hobart Ison. O'Connor was one of an influx of filmmakers who had come to rural Kentucky looking for picture-perfect poverty. Was O'Connor trespassing on more than real estate? Was Ison a homegrown hero? Thirty years later, the story of this unresolved crime still haunted Elizabeth Barret, a filmmaker born and raised in the region. For Barret this unsettling incident brought to the fore questions concerning media images and the power they wield over personal and cultural identity. In interviews she conducted with local residents, including some of the original subjects of O'Connor's film, the principal explanation offered was a deep-seated resentment at being used to depict destitution. By delving into her own middle-class upbringing in Hazard, Kentucky, Barret adds colorful complexity to a picture that tends toward the black-and-white of coal dust. Stranger with a Camera compassionately examines the media's responsibility to make images without trampling values and virtues. "Can filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people (they) portray?" Barret asks. Or is there a natural poverty of portrayal?