McElwee at MoMA

Ross McElwee is a rare bird:  he's an intensely personal documentarian who has actually been successful enough to keep making films without going broke. Though one can't imagine that he'll ever get rich off of his work, he continues to be lauded by critics, and to be recognized at film festivals. His most famous work, Sherman's March, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1986, and Bright Leaves opened to wide acclaim last year.

McElwee's films are strange – they're both so finely crafted that you're immediately sucked into his stories, and so cringingly personal that you sometimes feel you have to look away. Shot mostly with a handheld camera and starring McElwee himself, his works tend to wander with their director, taking unexpected turns as he travels in pursuit of fleeting, constantly changing goals. Sherman's March, for example, starts out as an examination (not surprisingly) of General Sherman's brutal March to the Sea, and the destruction it wrought on the Civil War south.  Quickly, though, the film changes course as McElwee's girlfriend breaks up with him, and he finds himself half-heartedly flirting with the childhood friends he encounters on his travels. It is to his tremendous credit that McElwee can show himself at his most awkward and pathetic without seeming cloying, or anything less than wryly genuine. Additionally, he is always able to integrate a larger story into his films, whether it's about his family, the American South, or human relationships.

Since only a few of McElwee's films are available on DVD, it's a tremendous gift when they're shown theatrically. New Yorkers, it's your turn:  MoMA is presenting what amounts to a McElwee retrospective next month.  From September 21-28, the museum will show seven McElwee programs (some with shorts), and the filmmaker himself will be on hand to present Bight Leaves on September 21.  If you're at all interested in the buried complexities of documentary filmmaking, and how images and personae are created and manipulated, do everything you can to see this series – McElwee is a true original, with intelligence, creativity, and skill to burn. [via Movie City Indie]