The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2017)
Portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman found her medium in 1980: the larger-than-life Polaroid Land 20x24 camera. For the next thirty-five years, she captured the “surfaces” of those who visited her studio: families, Beat poets, rock stars, and Harvard notables. As pictures begin to fade and her retirement looms, Dorfman gives Errol Morris an inside tour of her backyard archive.
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Excellent but underrated film
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Normally I'm an avid fan of acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven), but, to be honest, I was rather disappointed in this movie. It centers on the life and work of Elsa Dorfman, whose photographs using the large-format Polaroid technique have been praised for decades.Dorfman recounts in her own words her history and her artistry, and I did find her honesty and sense of humor engaging. However, we only get a glimpse of her striking photographs of writers, poets, and celebrities and I felt the movie would have been better served with her relating her personal experience with these photos and the people in them. Also, it's only towards the last third of the doc that we see her work with ordinary folk , and it seemed to me there was more of a story to be told there, as well.Although the film is only 1 hr. and 16 min. in length, the pacing was way too deliberate for my tastes, even getting tedious at times. Overall. I though there was a better tale to be told than what was presented in this doc unfortunately.
A peacefully satisfying and nicely edited off-camera interview which reveals the life and life's work of a portrait photographer, most of whose work was uniquely captured using one of the 5 (or so) huge 20x24 inch Polaroid cameras. Her portrait sittings consisted of two poses, and having lovingly saved the print not chosen/purchased by each client, she reflects on these 'b- side' but powerful images beginning in the early 70's of everyday people, a few of the famous, and many of herself and her family.