David Holzman's Diary
US Indies • 1h 13m
Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes
David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Vietnam War and social unrest blares over the radio, David Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson) unloads comic-neurotic monologues to his 16mm camera. When his relationship with Penny (Eileen Dietz) goes south, he retreats further into moving images, secretly recording his pretty neighbor and even turning his lens to the TV shows he watches. No longer able to deal with life outside celluloid, all of his ties to the real world begin to erode. The "totally delightful satire" (NY Times) of a narcissistic artist is also a well-crafted fiction about the deceptions of cinematic illusionism. Early on, Holzman quotes Jean-Luc Godard's famous dictum that "the cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second." As director Jim McBride teaches and Holzman soon learns, it lies just as often.
"This ingenious, scruffy 1967 metafiction by Jim McBride is an exotic fruit grown in New York from the seed of the French New Wave." —Richard Brody
Up Next in US Indies
-
The Midnight Swim
Directed by Sarah Adina Smith • Drama • With Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lafleur, Aleksa Palladino • 2014 • 84 minutes
Spirit Lake is unusually deep. No diver has ever managed to find the bottom, though many have tried. When Dr. Amelia Brooks disappears during a deep-water dive, her three daughters...
-
The Immaculate Conception of Little D...
Directed by David Russo • Drama • With Marshall Allman, Jeanette Maus • 2009 • 97 minutes
After losing his cubicle job as a data manager in Seattle, spiritually confused Dory feels like his life is going down the drain. He plummets from white collar to brown collar when he is forced to take a jo...
-
Keep the Lights On
Directed by Ira Sachs • Drama • With Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth; Julianne Nicholson • 2012 • 106 minutes
Keep the Lights On chronicles an emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship, and addiction. Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt)...
