NOTFILM is a feature-length experimental essay on FILM -- its author Samuel Beckett, its star Buster Keaton, its production and its philosophical implications -- utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.
UK
(London Film Festival)
UKPG
UK
The camera seeks to see,
the object seeks to hide.
Part documentary and part experimental essay, this ‘not-film’ takes a deep dive into Samuel Beckett’s one and only film: ’Film'
As a big fan of Buster Keaton, I enjoyed the documentary elements and the insights on Keaton via his friend James Karen. There’s also a wonderful abundance of old school footage.
Cheers to Noah Thompson for making me aware of this ‘not-film’.
”Beckett was aware they risked mere gimmickry”
Lengthy, thorough (some would say TOO thorough - Beckett and Keaton don't even meet in this until about the 50 minute mark) video essay detailing the making of Beckett's FILM, and what it represented both for Beckett and Buster Keaton. The film's length combined with the dry voiceover and the way it's clearly willing to indulge itself to make its point (i.e. showing a lengthy, wordless segment from COPS, more or less just because - luckily COPS is great) kind of limit its appeal for those who haven't watched FILM, or at the least, aren't Beckett or Keaton fans, but if you're not a fan of either man (or ideally, both) it seems a little odd you'd be watching this in the first place, I suppose, and if you ARE a fan of either, it's genuinely poignant AND informative.
To be is to be perceived.
More of a glorified video essay than a standard documentary (Which the movie seems to be aware of, considering it labels itself as a "kino-essay." Most pretentious term I've heard in recent memory? Yeah, honestly.) but I found it to overall be a worthwhile watch. It gave me the kind of insights I wanted on Film, with its symbolism, themes, production, and the various personalities that were involved. It makes the short, even more than regular movies, feel like a lightning in a bottle situation. Everyone meeting at the right place at the right time, and even if Samuel Beckett didn't get to fully make what he intended originally, here this thing is. It…
☆"Eye and I, through the filter of film; both, and yet neither; noteye, and notfilm."☆
A film about a film -- actually, a film about Film. Ross Lipman's experimental essay Notfilm is in fact one about the making of a short film, Samuel Beckett's only one called Film, starring Buster Keaton. The only two-hour-plus documentary about a 20-minute film I've ever seen, Lipman's piece features segments of Keaton's career, Beckett's interest in the art, and the making of and analysis of the avant-garde work in which they collaborated.
(By the way, you can and should watch Beckett's piece before this one. Check it out on YouTube. Shortly before, I did myself and it's quite something.)
While a few years later,…
I stripped a lot out of this review because I worried that it was too rude. It's still sort of rude, but hopefully less so.
This is a 2+ hour video essay (or "kino-essay" as it calls itself) on a short film that Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett made together in the '60s. I enjoy long video essays; there are a ton of great ones floating around out on YouTube and Vimeo. A video essay about a cryptic and enticing Keaton short with the Criterion Channel stamp of approval? I was really looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, I got little out of this that wasn't patently obvious from watching the short itself. The essay suffers from the worst of academic…
This was really fascinating, an incredibly comprehensive dissection of Samuel Beckett's only motion picture, "Film". I was really drawn to his surrealism and subtle existential dread when I was younger and performed a few of his scenes for theatre class. Alicia Malone interviewed the two producers on TCM after the showing and they said it took them seven years to create this 2 hour long documentary about a 20 minute short film. That just goes to show how esoteric Beckett's work is and just how deeply you can look into the world of film as well. Also loved the interview where Leonard Maltin lets out heavy sigh of annoyance when his wife lets the barking dogs in haha
‘Well, it’s one of those art things. I was confused when we shot it and I’m still confused.’ –Buster Keaton on making Samuel Beckett’s Film
I love James Karen, and as one of Buster’s best friends, I could listen to him tell Buster stories all day. Like the one where Buster was in alcohol rehab for 6 weeks then got out and went straight to a bar for 14 martinis.
A film about a group of filmmakers - the sum of whose experience in cinema totaled zero - and how they never bothered to ask the giant amongst them, a chief architect of cinema, a foundational pioneer and inventor Buster Keaton for a single contribution to the project.
This film is a wonderful examination of the making of Samuel Beckett’s film called Film but it doesn’t mention the psychology behind Beckett’s dismissive and disrespectful attitude toward Keaton.
The film quickly tries to inoculate Beckett against framing his behavior as self aggrandizing or narcissistic. They quote him as being nervous about his lack of experience in cinema. Well… ok, but he seems to have gotten over that because 2 weeks after…
For a film revolving around three people whose work I really admire – Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett, and legendary book publisher Barney Rosset – this documentary was a little tough to truly like. I loved the spirit of the thing, hearing Beckett’s voice, and getting the anecdotes about Keaton both on the set and in his treatment for alcoholism. What an extraordinary pairing Keaton and Beckett were. Unfortunately, while the documentary is a well-researched labor of love from Ross Lipman, it sprawls on in ways that are often more scholarly than entertaining. I think it also suffers for me because its subject, the 24 minute short titled Film, is not all that compelling, and here we have it expanded into…
hits that sweet spot where it's just about as pretentious as I'd want a 2 hr 10 min 'kino-essay' on a 20 min short film to be
Mostly waffley but I had fun. Good interviews
The idea of a feature length "making of" about a 20 minute short sounds comical (and both Beckett and Keaton would appreciate the humor of that) but it's completely justified. Fascinating cross section of major 20th century artistic figures and a "what might have been" very ordinary human failure to co-exist, the parallels between the two are striking in that sense.
Fascinating to hear recordings of Beckett explain his extremely specific conceptual aims met with frustrated confusion. A neophyte's failure with the collective creative process is scene in universally relatable terms.
Informational essay approach and silent film excerpts and black and white entirety give it an aesthetic life. Actor James Karen seems like he has a lot of great stories and I'm dying to see Leonard Maltin get legitimately mad about something.
