Because the project involved filming his own adolescent daughters naked at six-month intervals, due to severe ethical violations, legal restrictions, and ongoing allegations of child pornography made by his youngest daughter.
For six years, twice a year, Rivers would sit his daughters in front of his camera. The filming sessions were intimate and invasive. He would ask them pointed questions about their changing bodies and emerging sexuality, often while they were topless or completely naked. In 1981, he edited six years of this footage into a 45-minute film intended for public exhibition.
Any website claiming to offer a direct download link, torrent, or streaming link for "Documentary Growing 1981 Larry Rivers" is . Documentary Growing 1981 Larry Rivers Download
Perhaps Growing was a student film, a single 16mm reel shown once at the Collective for Living Cinema on White Street, then lost. Perhaps Rivers himself suppressed it—he was vain but also fiercely honest, and seeing himself on film may have revealed too much. Or perhaps the title is a misremembered fragment: a composite of Rivers’s actual film The Central Park Sheiks (1983) and a lost documentary called Larry Rivers: A Late Style that aired once on WNET.
While the art world has historically featured nudity, critics note that Growing weaponized a parental power dynamic to violate the consent of minors, crossing the line from artistic expression into severe exploitation. Because the project involved filming his own adolescent
By 1981, Rivers had already established a reputation for hybridizing media. His films, often made in collaboration with other artists, reject conventional narrative in favor of associative, sometimes chaotic, montage. Works like The Life of Jesus (1974) and Mendigo (1970) showcase his interest in raw, unpolished reality and the texture of everyday life. Growing fits squarely within this oeuvre: it is not a straightforward instructional gardening video nor a typical nature documentary. Instead, it is a lyrical, impressionistic essay that uses horticultural imagery as a metaphor for human creativity, aging, and sexuality.
The documentary you are looking for is titled (1981), and it centers on the influential American artist Larry Rivers He would ask them pointed questions about their
The daughters demanded the immediate removal of the tapes, raising concerns that the archive essentially contained child pornography. Acknowledging the severe ethical breach, NYU returned the controversial footage to the estate and family, ensuring it would not be made accessible to the public. Can You Download or Watch "Growing"?
In the years following Rivers' death in 2002, the debate surrounding Growing has intensified. The central question is whether the film should be celebrated as a groundbreaking work of conceptual art or condemned as a form of child pornography.