From Sudan to Sundance, 'Art Star' Questions Celebrity

Some thing. In one scene, Beecroft is shown rushing to photograph herself and the twins at the mission in Sudan, as Dinka women bang on the door of the church, upset because the twins are naked. In another, she is urging her photographer to hurry, hurry and get the shot. "Can we hide the window so they don't know we're taking pictures?" she hisses at her assistant. "We look like white monsters."

The film reveals that Beecroft's husband, Greg Durkin, thinks the adoption is a bad idea. The couple's relationship is fraying. He offers her a divorce. (The couple remain together, now in Los Angeles, where Durkin is vice president of research at Warner Bros. "I am living in a moment that is pretty hard," Beecroft says at Sundance. "But I want this family that I originally had and that was going to dissolve.")

She says she understood what her husband was saying -- that the twins were better off in Sudan with their own family, that Beecroft was often gone on long trips, her two young boys cared for by nannies. "I think that Greg, by interfering so passively aggressively, he made a better documentary, don't you think? He posed other questions," says Beecroft. "If it was an Angelina and Brad Pitt adoption story, where everybody is happy, that wouldn't have been very good. Society needed to hear no, no, maybe you shouldn't do that."

Eventually Beecroft abandons her attempt to adopt the twins. Asked if any good came of all this, Beecroft mentions that she gave the family of the twins two cows and a bicycle. She quickly says, "This is nothing." Why did she take the pictures? "I felt the urge to do them when I realized I couldn't adopt them. I needed to have this image, as a surrogate, but for me it's only the beginning," Beecroft says. "I'm working on a book on it, on a documentary, that is not a documentary like this documentary, but like an artist's notebook but I feel like I'm just at the beginning of it."

Beecroft says, "Sudan is a microcosm of Africa and of the blacks in the world, and I know it is presumptuous of me to take this subject under my wing, but I actually want to. It is my interest now."

What does the filmmaker think? "Often these children aren't really orphans," says Brettkelly. "What else can we do in these communities so these people can support and help their own children?" Instead of just whisking them off to the West. "It's a tricky subject. But as citizens of the privileged world, we need to think about it."

Beecroft smiles, her face a pale moon. She says, "I really enjoyed this criticism. It is what I work for. I want people to exercise their thoughts, and I provoke with this image. Because the image was intentional also, not only a souvenir. But it had an intent to provoke. So I was happy with this reaction. That is part of my work. To create a little bit of irritation for the audience."