NOTFILM is the feature-length movie on the production of Samuel Beckett’s FILM and its philosophical implications – utilising additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements. The only work Beckett made for projected cinema, FILM is in essence a chase between camera and pursued image that finds existential dread embedded in the very apparatus of the movies itself. The chased object is none other than an aged Buster Keaton, who was understandably befuddled at Beckett and director Alan Schneider’s imperative that he keep his face hidden from the camera’s gaze. FILM is a cinematic conundrum that asks more questions than it answers.
NOTFILM (PG)
Dir Ross Lipman/US 2015/128 mins
Billie Whitelaw, Kevin Brownlow, Barney Rosset
FILM (U)
Dir Alan Schneider/US 1965/21 mins/Silent
Buster Keaton, Nell Harrison, James Karen