At the Old Tucson theme park in Tucson, Arizona, visitors step out of their normal lives and into the city’s past. Or, more accurately, a funhouse mirror of the past that plays up the cowboy romance and tamps down the drudgery and poverty to cultivate a good ol’ time. Over the course of a day, the US directors Sue Ding and Sarah Garrahan capture visitors enjoying the park’s many attractions, including shooting games, live shows, rides and, of course, the opportunity to cosplay as sheriffs, outlaws and saloon girls in the old-timey photography studio.
Throughout, park guests discuss what draws them to Old Tucson. Whether it’s movie mythos, a longing for a simpler, ‘less political’ era, or just the fun of escapism, there’s an undeniable allure in stepping into a romanticised past that never quite existed. One woman prepares for the risky solitude of Georgia O’Keeffe’s American West How Westerns captured the American psyche and eventually bit the dust Our ideas about what early movies looked like are all wrong Thieves of ‘cursed’ rocks pen letters of remorse to a national park Dispatches from a cowboy past: a one-room classic country radio station (barely) holds on On the US-Mexico border, loved ones on both sides can see each other but cannot touch Ride shotgun through mid-century LA with Ed Ruscha’s photos and Jack Kerouac’s words A boy wants to wear a red dress in a photo with his dad, but doesn’t quite dare How gang violence is American violence: it shows alienation at all social levels
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