Seemingly less a visual exploration of the seminal André Bazin text and more an instance recognizable, admired filmmakers to share thoughts on the medium in which they find a proper creative outlet (à la Side by Side), an upcoming documentary, What Is Cinema?, has received its first trailer today. But, unlike last year’s documentary on the digital takeover, director Chuck Workman opted to speak exclusively with those skirting that line between experimental and commercially viable — David Lynch, Kelly Reichardt, Mike Leigh (?), and Michael Moore (??) are among the participants; Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Akerman, and Bresson appear in archival clips — as a means of focusing on those those who, in the director’s own words, “have used their art form’s tools, often breaking the rules, or inventing new ones, asking the audience to look harder, listen more closely, think about the form of the work as much as the content.”
The preview for What Is Cinema? happens to be a short one, itself mostly distinguished by a) the faces which briefly crop up and b) the use of Philip Glass‘s earth-shattering Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters score; if there’s little else to note, it does nothing to sap this writer’s desire to see what else Workman and his impressive ensemble might have in store.
Watch the trailer below (via ThePlaylist):
What Is Cinema? will play at DOC NYC on November 19. No theatrical release date has yet been noted.
What did you make of this preview? Is another documentary about the film industry something you have any interest in?