The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography
54th New York Film Festival
September 30 - 11, 2016
Errol Morris’s masterful and surprising new film, about the 20×24 Polaroid photographer Elsa Dorfman, is a portrait of an extraordinary woman whose work is a heartbreaking embodiment of the passing of time.
Errol Morris’s masterful and surprising new film is simplicity itself: a visit to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, studio of his friend, the 20×24 Polaroid portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman, who specifies on her website that she likes her subjects “to wear clothes (and to bring toys, skis, books, tennis racquets, musical instruments, and particularly pets…).” As this charming, articulate, and calmly uncompromising woman takes us through her 50-plus years of remarkable but fragile images of paying customers, commissioned subjects, family, and close friends (including the poet Allen Ginsberg), the sense of time passing grows ever more acute. An NYFF54 selection. A Neon release. Errol Morris’s short film The Umbrella Man will precede screenings of The B-Side.
A warm and hugely entertaining documentary.
—Benjamin Lee, The Guardian
quietly passionate and inspiring new film,
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Errol Morris’ winning documentary about his unsung artist friend.
—Robert Abele, LA Times
Morris turns his camera on Dorfman herself, letting the kind and self-effacing artist tell her story.
—Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
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