Sick-Amour: A Love Story

Sick-Amour: A Love Story (2024)
a film by Joel Tauber

Screening & Reception: March 3, 2025
Scales Fine Arts Center, Film Screening: Room 102 | Reception: Scales Lobby

Sick-Amour: A Love Story (2024) celebrates the forlorn and lonely Tree that Joel Tauber adopts in the middle of a giant parking lot in front of the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena (CA, USA). The 77-minute documentary—which was filmed over the course of 18 years—paints a multi-faceted portrait of the Tree via a series of interviews with experts in different fields; while it chronicles Tauber’s efforts to improve the Tree’s life. Tauber waters the Tree with giant water bags, installs tree guards to protect it from cars, builds giant earrings to celebrate its beauty, lobbies to remove the asphalt beneath its canopy and to protect it with a ring of boulders, and helps the Tree reproduce. Then—years later—shocking tragedy occurs, and Tauber is forced to re-consider what it means to love the Tree.