Luca Severi's THAT CLICK highlights a photo- grapher you should know -- but maybe don't

What a fun -- charming, surprising, fast-paced -- ride is the new documentary, THAT CLICK, all about the life and work of a certain Canadian-born celebrity photographer by the name of Douglas Kirkland. Though I had seen quite a bit of his ground-breaking work down the decades, TrustMovies never seemed to know (or at least to remember) the guy's name. This new documentary, written and directed by Italian-born filmmaker, Luca Severi, has certainly changed that. 

After viewing this film, one possible reason I find for Kirkland's near anonymity -- even among those of us who follow film and performers fairly closely -- might just be the relatively small ego Mr. Kirkland seems to possess. Which I am not sure can be said about most other famous shutterbugs. Richard Avedon, anyone?

In any case, Signore Severi (shown at left), who is clearly enamored of both Kirkland and his work (as I suspect you will be, too, once you've seen the doc) has organized his movie so that we keep jumping back and forth in time, as we see more and more of the history of the photographer, along with his oeuvre. But this jumping is fun in its own right, while keeping us alert, and the work itself shows how Kirkland has grown and changed over the passing decades.

It is also impressive how very fond of Kirkland were and are so many of the celebrities he has captured on film (and eventually on digital). From the likes of Elizabeth Taylor (who initially said "interview only -- no photos" until our guy, just starting out, sweetly begged her permission) to Marilyn Monroe (whose photo session produced perhaps the loveliest, most intimate and special set of photos ever taken of this icon), the work is indeed impressive and includes plenty of international stars (Brigitte Bardot, Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve), too.

More recent celebs include the likes of Sharon Stone (above), Michelle Williams (below), and Baz Luhrmann (further below), all of whom have plenty of interesting, often telling things  to say about the man and his work. It is also clear that they dearly love and appreciate him and are well-spoken enough to pass this appreciation on to us.

The doc covers more than mere celebrity photography, as our man seems also to have had an interest in current events -- like the huge economic downturn that put many folk out of work back in the 70s -- and also in following up with the non-celebrity subjects of his photography and their continued well-being, of which he proved to be a part.

How Kirkland (shown below) kept up with both the times and the changes in photography is highlighted, with results -- as per usual concerning this talented man -- that are well worth viewing. For anyone in the least besotted by our glamour icons of the past (Ann-Margaret to Coco Chanel) and present (Nicole Kidman), That Click would seem a must. For anyone simply interested in photography, making the acquaintance of this fellow who just keeps on going -- and growing -- proves a lovely thing to do. 

The 90-minute documentary, from Omnibus Entertainment (a division of Film Movement), hits the street on DVD and digital this coming Tuesday, March 16. Click here for more information on how to view it.

Photography, spying and the joy of Communism in Peter Stephan Jungk's documentary, TRACKING EDITH

A documentary in which the content and tale told are much more interesting that the actual execution of the material itself, TRACKING EDITH is the story of Edith Tudor-Hart (née Edith Suschitzky), born in Vienna in 1908, who emigrated to London, acted as a spy for Russia's KGB, and was simultaneously an even better -- first-rate, really -- photographer who beautifully captured many of the social issues of her time, from England's industrial decline and the plight of refugees of the Spanish Civil war to Britain's housing policy and the needs of its children.

Edith was also the great aunt of the filmmaker here, Peter Stephan Jungk (shown left), who is to be commended for bringing to our attention this very interesting woman and her work, even if the result, as a movie, is somewhat mediocre. If nothing else, Edith's photography that we see here should make many viewers ready to line up at any exhibition of her work that might find its way to their locale. It's that good.

Her spying was something else. As a Jew who had to leave Austria due to the Nazis rise to power, she -- as did so many others of the day -- embraced Communism as, at very least, an antidote to the fascism that was growing ever stronger during this time. While many eventually understood Russia's Stalin to be as crazy and murderous as was Adolf Hitler, Edith evidently clung to her belief that Communism would make the world a much better place.

The lovely Edith (shown in self-portrait on poster, top) is said to have recruited for the KGB a number of very important spies -- often from the cream of the Britain's crop. She was responsible for the recruitment of both Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, two of the infamous (or famous, depending on your viewpoint) Cambridge Spy Ring, that, in Russia, was known as the Magnificent Five.

Filmmaker Jungk uses everything from archival photos and interviews with family members, historians, photo historian (above, right) even an ex-KGB member (below) to somehow give us a fuller portrait of our photographer/spy. Individually, the interviews make some sense, yet our Edith never really coalesces as she might, and the constant jumping from one subject and/or person to another becomes annoying over time.

Further, the use of animation (below) that tries to goose up the proceedings to would-be thriller status seems almost silly and certainly pointless. This may stand in for the often "acted-out" segments of certain documentaries, or perhaps take the place of archival footage that might have been difficult to obtain (though I rather doubt this: Britain's Blitz by the Nazi's was undocumented?), but as seen here,  the animation seems both unnecessary and rather clunky.

The family members interviewed, including brother Wolf Suschitzky (below, center) and nephew Peter Suschitzky (below, left, who became a noted cinematographer and credits Edith for steering him away from science and toward art), provide the most interesting dialog and may make you want to learn even more about this unusual woman who gave birth to a lovely son who, in his younger years, turned schizophrenic and never recovered.

Finally, it's Edith photography (above and below), seen heavily over the end credits, that seems most special. This woman clearly had a gift -- and used it. I hope I'll get to see an exhibition of her work before I depart this world.

From First Run Features and running 92 minutes, Tracking Edith arrives on DVD this coming Tuesday, February 26 -- for purchase and/or rental.

All about an amazing personality and career: Lisa Immordino Vreeland's LOVE, CECIL

Back in 2012, the granddaughter-in-law of the fashion maven Diana Vreeland, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, co-directed a documentary about the more famous Vreeland's life and work. It was a resounding success in many ways (even, to some extent, at the box-office), and in 2015, the younger Vreeland followed this up with another well-received documentary about Peggy Guggenheim. Now, Ms Vreeland has turned her attention to one of the fashion and photography icons of the mid-20th-Century, Cecil Beaton. The result -- LOVE, CECIL -- is yet another documentary home run.

Sure, Cecil Beaton was, as one of the interviewees admits rather far along in the film, a social-climbing snob. But he was also a supremely talented photographer, writer and designer, as so much of the work we see in this rapturously beautiful documentary thoroughly proves. And Ms Vreeland (shown at left), along with her editor, Bernadine Colish, and cinematographer, Shane Sigler, using a wealth of archival photographic treasures and a running narrative taken from Beaton's own witty and delightful diaries (read superbly by Rupert Everett), interspersed with amusing, telling and intelligent interviews with a wide range of prominent people, whips all this into an informative, entertaining and, yes, brittle (just as was Mr. Beaton) froth that allows this 98-minute movie to speed along quite nicely.

Gay and barely closeted (at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offense in Britain), Beaton (shown above and below) managed to avoid any consequences from this (save perhaps his inability to latch on to any even vaguely permanent love relationship).

What got him most in trouble, stalling and nearly ending his career, turns out to be an anti-Semitic slur he buried, hardly able to be noticed, into some published art work for Conde Nast. Why this even happened remains a mystery (it seems to have been so to him, as well), as he was not noticeably anti-Semitic -- though god knows, plenty of his famous friends certainly were: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, for instance, along with other Hitler worshipers in the extended "royal family."

How and why he survived this event and quite literally "worked" his way out of it provides one of the more interesting episodes in a documentary chock full of them. His initial success in the USA and New York City enabled him to return to England with enough fame to build on and garner even more. His photographic work during World War II (for which he seems less known now) helped him regain his stature, as did his photography of the Royal Family and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

As we learn what happens to his brother, father and mother (his two sisters disappear from the narrative early on, never to return) weight and sadness are added to Beaton's tale and life. Yet the man himself remains witty, charming and cleverly self-deprecating throughout.

Thanks to Vreeland's smart pacing and to Beaton's rather incredible life, nearly everything we see and hear proves a kind of "highlight." What a career this man had! By the time we get to the section in which an interviewer asks him to name some of the folk he does not like -- and why -- his bitchy, funny answers scorch the screen. (His take-down of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, in particular, seems absolutely on the nose.)

Among the interviewees, artist David Hockney's reminiscences prove especially fond and thoughtful. As old age approaches we meet Beaton's much-loved white cat and see the man himself struggling against the dying of the light. Once that cat has departed, it is but a matter of a very short time until Beaton does, too.

Vreeland's documentary is like a trip back to a time long gone -- one that perhaps is not so much missed (it's the mid-20th-Century, after all). Compared to our current times, however, and what looks like a world approaching corporate/wealthy Fascism leading a citizenry made up of far too much right-wing, racist scum, those days seem a paradise lost.

From Zeitgeist Films, Love, Cecil opens this Friday, June 29, in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and in Los Angeles on July 20 at the Landmark NuArt. Overall, the film is scheduled to play some 25 cities across the country, including, here in South Florida, the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton on July 27 and the Coral Gables Art Cinema in Miami on August 10. Click here (then scroll down) to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters

Agnès Varda's back, with JR in tow and maybe her most delightful doc yet: FACES PLACES

She is not only one of France's most sublime national treasures, but that of cinema, too, and her worth simply grows from film to film. Agnès Varda's latest -- and perhaps her last (she turns 90 next May, and both her general strength and eyesight seem to be slowly failing) -- turns out to be a lovely collaboration with a photographer and muralist who goes by the name of JR. (His moniker is not a nod to Dallas, I am guessing).

The collaboration turns out to be a near-perfect one, with the pair complementing and setting each other off in the most wonderful of ways. He (shown at left) is tall; she's short. She (shown below) is old; he's young. He is hugely private, never removing his dark glasses, while she could hardly be more transparent. And they're both so full of talent and creative juice that spending 90 minutes with them will seem as though you've died and gone directly to art/cinema/ photography/mural

heaven. Not to mention all the lovely people and animals you'll meet along the way. I don't think you will even need to have viewed other Varda pix to fully appreciate this one, for it bubbles along with such life, energy and good will that it rather dares you not to immediately fall in love with it, its creators and all the folk you meet within. (If you're new to Varda, I would suggest Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I for starters.) The more you've already seen of her films, however, the more you will understand and appreciate why this one seems maybe the culmination of all she has accomplished.

How does she do it, one wonders? By "it," I mean the ease by which she manages to connect all these people and the "art" they contribute here by simply allowing themselves to be filmed and photographed -- JR's amazing enlargements of the photos then being glued to their local buildings -- as well as by speaking with the filmmakers and sharing bits of their lives. All this coalesces into something simple and very pleasurable yet also somehow rich and profoundly humane.

As one of the interviewees mentions en route, "Art is supposed to surprise us, right?" Absolutely. Hence the surprise and delight we take in meeting everyone from the woman, above, who refuses to move out of her "condemned" row of old houses formerly occupied by French miners (she was a miner's wife)

to the flock of goats we meet, along with the folk who raise them. Some goats no longer have horns; the how and why of this is explored quite interestingly, with no judgment made but nonetheless giving us the information we need to make our own.

Then there are the wives of the dockworkers whom we meet and get to know just a bit, before their images (at left) are attached to the huge containers that the workers must fill and empty. We go from towns to countryside to the Louvre (through which JR pushes Varda in her wheelchair, as an homage to Godard's running-through-the-Louvre scene in Bande à part.

She still rather worships Godard (foolishly, in my estimation, for she is twice the filmmaker that this over-rated, misogynistic pretension-artist usually is). Varda and JR go to Godard's "new house" for breakfast, and his response should not surprise anyone who follows the man's films.

Among some genuinely precious moments here are a look at a town's "bell ringer," the worker in a salt factory who tries to keep the place "accident-free," and the dear old (and now deceased) friend of Varda, Guy Bourdin, whom we see as a young man who was Varda's model. How Bourdin's youth becomes very briefly immortalized, below, is wonderful, strange and sad.

The final gift that these filmmakers offer each other at film's end is so take-your-breath-away perfect that Faces Places (Visages, villages in the original French) immediately becomes a movie that, like all of Varda's work, you'll want and need to view again.

From Cohen Media Group and running just 90 minutes, opens theatrically this Friday, October 6, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and on October 13 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Royal theaters. Elsewhere. Yes, nationwide, in limited release, but I have not found a link to the list of theaters, as yet....

Laura Israel's DON'T BLINK -- ROBERT FRANK returns this singular artist to Film Forum

Back in 2009, New York City's indispensable arthouse cinema Film Forum offered a wonderful double bill: An American Journey: In Robert Frank's Footsteps coupled to a swell little short, In the Street, that featured photos taken in Spanish Harlem back in the 1940s. Beginning today, Wednesday, July 13, and running for a full two weeks at Film Forum, photography/art-film connoisseurs can get their fill of Robert Frank via the new documentary from Laura Israel entitled DON'T BLINK -- ROBERT FRANK.

During the course of this 82-minute documentary, Mr. Frank, now 91 years old and shown above and throughout below, muses that his moving pictures are not as accessible to most audiences as were his photographs. TrustMovies must count himself among those audiences, as he find the photos, especially those from The Americans, simply phenomenal, while the movies range, in his opinion, from slapdash fun to not much at all.

Still, TM would just about give up his left ball to be able to see Frank's legendary movie, Cocksucker Blues, about and with The Rolling Stones, which has never been released theatrically but will have two screenings at Film Forum at 9:50 PM on Wednesday and Thursday, July 20 and 21. (Order soon, if tickets even remain available.)  One might imagine that any film about Robert Frank ought to be generously endowed with gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, and sure enough, Ms Israel (shown at right, and the director of the surprising and disturbing 2012 wind-energy documentary, Windfall) has given us a good dose of exactly that.

Her movie about Frank, his life and career, also manages to capture much of the looney-ness, charm and oddball, alternately under-wraps/exhibitionistic kind of talent Frank had in his younger days. Now, in his more-than-senior years, the guy seems to have grown jollier and less angry (or maybe he's just worn down). Israel also captures the rhythm -- jazzy, beatnik, playful -- of the man and his work, making the film seem even more of a collaboration than the principals might have imagined.

Don't Blink bounces from scene to scene, decade to decade, oeuvre to oeuvre, giving us finally more of an overview than anything in-depth. We view snippets of Frank's films -- from his first, Pull My Daisy, to About Me: a Musical and Candy Mountain (the latter appears to have been Frank's one attempt at a full-length, 35mm, more-or-less independent/vaguely mainstream movie).

We get less of a sense of what's these films entailed than we do of the constant struggle the filmmaker had as he was making them. Of the man's personal life, we learn a lot -- of his decades-long relationship with wife and fellow artist, June Leaf, above, and of his (their?) two children Pablo and Andrea, both of whom died young (the latter in a plane crash, the former I am not certain, but perhaps via suicide?) -- but again without going deeply into anything.

Frank-ophiles should come away from the movie pleased at having seen so much of their hero, while those of us less familiar with the man than with his early photography will still find a lot to like and learn. Intercut with present day and archival footage is one particular interview that Frank gave decades earlier that Israel returns to time and again, in which the artist seems annoyed at having to do the interview yet eventually spills some interesting beans about his life, art and raison d'etre.

In terms of Frank's artistic quest, Don't Blink may put you in mind of Samuel Beckett, had Sam been a bit more manic. Toward the end of this odd little romp, the artist tells us, "Keep your eyes open, don't shake, don't blink," which may be his advice to budding photographers, even though he long ago gave up his career (and for many of us his crown) as a, maybe the, great photo journalist.

From Grasshopper Film, Don't Blink--Robert Frank opened today, July 13, at Film Forum in New York City for a two-week run. Here in South Florida, it opens on July 22 at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, and on July 29 in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with theaters and cities listed, click here.then scroll way down and click on WHERE TO WATCH.

Alanté Kavaïté's THE SUMMER OF SANGAILE: Lithuania's entry into this year's Oscar sweeps

TrustMovies can't quite imagine what some of the older members of the Academy will make of the hot lesbian love scenes in THE SUM-MER OF SANGAILE, the official Lithuanian entry into the upcoming Best Foreign Language Film contention. Whatever reaction those scenes produce, I can't help but think that members will be greatly impressed with the cinematic beauty and quiet, tender artfulness of this unusual movie. Its plot may be a mere wisp, involving the coming-of-age of its fragile heroine, yet the film's visuals -- beginning to end -- prove stunning.

That the film, written and directed by Alanté Kavaïté (shown at right), won the Sundance Film festival award for directing (world cinema -- dramatic) should give some indication of how surprising those visuals are. Beginning with our heroine, Sangaile (the lovely Julija Steponaityte, below), entranced by the amazing-if-frightening work of a local stunt pilot during his air show, the film almost immediately cuts to our other protagonist, Auste (Aiste Dirziute), also a looker but one whose true beauty emerges more slowly as the film progresses.

Auste (below), hugely attracted to Sangaile, sets about meeting and seducing the slightly younger girl, and she make no bones about any of this. A bright, creative young woman, gifted in fashion and photography (both the clothes and the photographs seen here are good enough to turn the heads of titans in both industries), Auste uses these skills to draw Sangaile -- who early on in the film has a clearly unsatisfying sexual encounter with a young man from Auste's group -- close, closer, then whew!

All the while, Ms Kavaïté's concern for the environment in which these girls exist -- the incredibly verdant countryside, the spacious sky, the local lake, the very different homes in which the two girls live -- into which come the almost profound art that Auste produces with the visual help of Sangaile combine to create a memorable fragment of a movie. (The outstanding cinematography is by Dominique Colin.)

Sangaile has health problems -- diabetes, perhaps, and vertigo that keeps her from pursuing her dream of flying -- and she also has a somewhat distant mother, a former ballerina who appears to have had some trouble honing her parenting skills.

For her part, Auste seems surprisingly competent as both an artist and autonomous person. She "manages" the relationship as best she can, while helping Sangaile toward her own autonomy. The movie, however, is finally more a visual feast than any deep exploration of character or relationship.

But as that, The Summer of Sangaile is well worth seeing as it gently yet luxuriously probes the place of family, friendship, sexuality, creativity and challenge in the lives of the young.

From Strand Releasing, in Lithuanian with English subtitles and running 97 minutes, this Lithuania/France/Netherlands co-production opens in New York City at the IFC Center this Friday, November 20, and in Los Angeles at the Sundance Sunset Cinema on December 4.