Film asks, 'Can a kid really paint that?'

You have either thought it, said it or heard it said about abstract art. "My Kid Could Paint That" is not only the reaction of many to swatches of color and composition on canvas, it is the name of a documentary film that explores so much more than just art.

At the center of the film is then four-year-old Marla Olmstead, an artist of great talent and fame — or a pawn of clever fraud that took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the art community and snookered the media and dealers and critics around the globe. Telling the story of Marla's meteoric rise in the art world, and the shocking accusations that blind-sided her family, is filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev.

He spoke with the Deseret Morning News about his film, himself and the family of four that drives his documentary, which was just purchased by Sony Pictures Classics and is probably coming to a theater near you.

"It is not a film about Marla," he said, speaking carefully in one of the first media interviews about his thought-provoking documentary. "It is a film about all of our different ideas, adult's ideas, of who she is."

The story starts innocently enough. Marla took some oil paints her father was using and produced a remarkable work of abstract art. Before long her works attracted strong attention while hanging in a local restaurant and after some media attention, the shy and beautiful child was given a show at a gallery that promptly sold out. Local newspaper reporters caught the story and Bar-Lev began filming the family with a two-person crew, recording the early years of a possibly great child prodigy.

When the New York Times picked up the story, it exploded internationally, shining a bright light on an otherwise normal pre-schooler and what the film depicts as a loving, protective mother and a caring but driven father. The family became a fixture in the media, including network television, but when CBS's "60 Minutes" aired a show with "expert" analysis and hidden-camera evidence of Marla creating a sub-standard painting, the Olmstead's whole world was turned upside down. The market for her painting instantly dried up and her collectors were more than a little alarmed that they may have been victims of fraud.

"I think what I grappled with is when something bad happens to your subjects, it is good for your film."

Bar-Lev, who had been with the family for many months, was on hand with his camera to capture the reversal of fortune the devastated family faced. Complicating matters, the documentarian's own efforts to film Marla creating one of her gallery pieces had met with failure. The filmmaker had his doubts, and his film is a reflection of how he experienced the story as it unfolded.

"I didn't want to be in the film. In this case it seemed more truthful to draw attention to the fact that this is not the 'true' story of the Olmsteads but a representation of them by a fallible storyteller."

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