FILM REVIEW: Robert Yapkowitz’s & Richard Peete’s Intimate Film Portrait of Karen Dalton

“We’ve approached this production with one goal in mind: To introduce Karen’s music to a wider audience”– Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete.

Been a long time since this reviewer was mesmerized by a music documentary. Eyes, ears and gut — the latter the core of my being for processing the conscious and the unconscious — locked on to IN MY OWN TIME several minutes into the film. I was swept away in a time warp of a mind-body-soul experience subliminally recalling the good, the bad, the beautiful and the excess of the 60s via a compelling cinematic portrait of an extraordinary artiste.

I think it was because of her voice. I haven’t had a music-doc bring about a mind-body-soul experience in a long time.

IN MY OWN TIME is soulfully poignant. The filmmakers fuse selections of contemporary and archival interviews, footage, stills, and audio — as well as Jordon’s poems and personal journals — into a narrative that I imagine lots of sexagenarians, septuagenarians and octogenarians may think are best vividly attainable only through favorite hallucinogens. But the filmmakers’ contemporary interviews, such as that of Jordon’s daughter, are also compelling.