Renowned American documentarian Ross McElwee confronts the limits of the movie camera as a tool of the heart as he revisits family footage after the death of his son, and reflects on their relationship to and through cinema.
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For documentary makers obsessed with filming their own lives, the question of what this impulse is really all about has no simple answer — especially when tragic events have a way of imbuing images from the past with whole new meanings.
American director Ross McElwee, celebrated for his long career of autobiographical work, faces the terrifying reminder that capturing life is not the same as understanding it or having power over its course, after the heartbreak of his son’s sudden death. Adrian had been behind an effort to fictionalise his father’s 1986 Sundance winner Sherman’s March, a seemingly impossible project that had veered off course in the wake of his addiction.
As McElwee revisits old footage and episodes of their family history in his first film in over 14 years, trying to grasp the reality of the loss and somehow find or farewell his son, he spares no brutal honesty for his own compulsions. This is a devastatingly vulnerable and astonishing labour of love, buoyant with the charms of McElwee’s eccentric, wide-ranging eye, amid melancholy for the ruthlessness of time.
- Carmen Gray