Never Look Away

Remembering Margaret Moth, he former lover, Jeff Russi, recalls “She definitely wanted to be where people were doing something wrong. Where she had a purpose.”

Some people live life as hard as they can. Growing up in a household where both parents were violent, a place she would later address only through her nightmarish sketches, Moth died her hair, changed her name, moved to the big city, made a name for herself as a photographer. She picked up Russi when he was 17 and she was 30, but there was something real between them, sweet and tender, to which they returned over the years, when she was back in town. Another such lover, photojournalist Yashinka, awaited her in a flat in Paris. The two of them did heroin together; with Russi, it was speed, or whatever came to hand. But nothing, nothing came close to the thrill of war.

Most people see combat and hide or run for cover, other photojournalists assure us here. Margaret ran towards it. They recall her standing straight up in the street when bullets were flying, as if she were immune. Perhaps she believed that then. Perhaps she was yet to realise that life and death were not the only possibilities.

She was, Russi says, a lion tamer. They would take acid every weekend. She would trip hard, and they would go skating and head out to The Island, Houston’s only punk club, before going skydiving in the morning. Later, when she was in hospital, her visitors included Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Arsenio Hall. She made an impression on everyone she met. Sometimes, though, she would cry for hours at a time, seemingly unable to explain why. A lesser documentarian might portray her as a broken person, acting out as a result of a tragic past. Lucy Lawless, though this is her first time in the director’s chair, treats her with more respect. Opening the film with a montage of famous news clips, glimpses of ruined buildings and shuddering explosions, soundtracked with Barracuda, she embraces the totality of what Margaret was, resisting diagnoses, making room for a person who lived wholly on her own terms.

Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, the civil war in Georgia, brutal inter-ethnic conflict in Sarajevo – Margaret saw it all. She was the only reason that some of it made the news at all. Clips of other people’s footage show us the connection she had with people, wherever she went. Children awed by her differentness crowd around her, trying to get into shot. Battered survivors pour out their hearts to her. She’s attentive, totally focused. She gave people a chance to speak in the most desperate situations. With contributions from reporters who worked alongside her, Lawless pays tribute to her contribution, but also to her ferocity and tenacity, to her mastery of the art of living.