The Impersonation (1983)

Overview

Herewith the strange case of Reginald Pepper, the acclaimed English “primitive” painter who, some say, lives secluded with his mother and two cats in Swindon and who, say others, suffers a mental handicap which accounts for the pinheaded figures in his paintings. A Sunday Times article shocked the art community by shedding doubts as to the authenticity of this untrained genius, and these doubts were compounded when students from the now defunct Swindon College of Art discovered, in attempting to make a documentary film on the subject, that Reginald Pepper had mysteriously disappeared! Enter filmmakers Noel Burch (Correction Please, or How We Got Into Pictures) and Christopher Mason, who piece together the story, after their own fashion, of this elusive painter of oversized cats and thereby illuminate a whole field of skepticism regarding the dubious nature of the term “primitive” as applied to contemporary painting.