It Chooses You

Miranda July is a complex character and an immensely talented one; a writer, filmmaker, recording artist and performance artist, she charts the development of her latest project in It Chooses You. Initially intended as a screenplay, the work travels instead through the intricate inner worlds of San Fransiscans via the most unlikely of forums: Pennysaver ads.

Beautifully illustrated, each portrait a frozen moment of lives richly lived. July documents the reasons people part with their possessions - from a collection of saris owned by Primila, who wants to reach out to the community in order to help a village in India, to the sad tale of Domingo, who collects pictures of pretty girls and babies and writes, on his forty-fifth birthday, 'I am an old man'. Most poignant is the tale of Joe, who writes touchingly-dirty limericks to his wife of fifty-eight years, who is 'working furiously on the side of good'. His story is so interesting that July wishes to recreate the moment they met on camera. 'It became harder and harder,' she writes, 'to remember that I had met him just today and had no responsibility to him, or history with him.'

The characters who populate It Chooses You in turn fuel July's own narrative, spark her imagination, and speak of the deep bonds that run through all humanity; its mortality, its fragility, and its need to reach out to others as long as it persists.