Ida's Blog

Ida's Blog
Holy Cheese!

Film and autobiographical bits.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Favorite new film genre - Autobiographical Documentary

I'm just coming home with a natural high from seeing the film Ingrid Bergman: In her own words. It showed a collection of her home movies, clips from movies she starred in, readings from her diaries, photos and 3rd party videos all woven into a seamless documentary. She had a movie camera since she was young and through her life, three marriages and 2 Academy Awards. It is a first person account of her life. It is amazing that pictures and 8 mm footage survived a century. She was born in 1915.
It reminds me of the award winning documentary i saw last year: Listen to me Marlon.

In Marlon Brando's autobiographical documentary, he made 1,000's of audio tapes like a journal. These were interwoven with pictures, home films, the films he starred in and third party pictures and videos. It was jaw dropping when I saw this. I couldn't believe his career beginning in Streetcar Named Desire in 1951 until his death of 2004 were documented and tightly edited into 90 minutes and very well.
I see these movies as an achievement in the art of archiving. Without archivists who painstakingly catalog and categorize thousands and thousands of hours of footage, these films wouldn't be possible.
I credit myself as an amateur archivist and I have been collecting family photos, journals, audio and scrap booking for decades. It is my dream to assemble an autobiography of all these things. Once it's done I can let go of all the hard copies and just have a little well edited 90 minute film.

Click Here for Listen to Me Marlon Excerpt



Around this time - My favorite Documentary came out - WolfPack.

Click Here for WolfPack Trailer

20 20 Interview on The WolfPack Brothers

Excerpt from WolfPack shown at Film Festival - I didn't see it there

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About Me

San Francisco, CA, United States