Errol Morris has taken on politics, crime, tabloid fodder, and much more throughout his expansive career has an investigative documentarian. His latest feature finds him getting more personal, but rather than turning the camera on himself, he uses it to examine one of his closest friends in The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography.
A quaint, gentle film exploring a life’s creative passion, it focuses on Dorfman’s career as the master of the Polaroid Land 20×24 camera. With the film opening today at Film Society of Lincoln Center and Angelika Film Center in New York, we’re pleased to debut an exclusive clip that reveals what the title refers to. Check it out below.
Portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman found her medium in 1980: the larger-than-life Polaroid Land 20×24 camera. For the next thirty-five years she captured the “surfaces” of those who visit her Cambridge, Massachusetts studio: families, Beat poets, rock stars, and Harvard notables. As pictures begin to fade and her retirement looms, Dorfman gives Errol Morris an inside tour of her backyard archive.
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography is now playing at Film Society of Lincoln Center and Angelika Film Center in New York.