16mm, b/w , sound, 6:10, 2009

Leads is part of The Perlin Papers series.

This 16mm film replicates information the FBI wrote in surveillance notebooks about the daily life of a woman, Olga Pravdina, living in New York in the late 1940s. Up to five FBI agents were required to observe and follow her as she went about her daily activities, and to write down every single thing she did from morning to night. The notebooks are filled with descriptions such as “bought stockings, 97 cents,” and “went to movies, sat in front row.” It is fascinating to me that men were hired to move their bodies through the city connected to this woman, experiencing her days so intimately. It is unknown if Pravdina or the many other women described in the files ever learned about these notes of their daily lives.