“Her Archive Was Kind of a Trail...A Filmmaker’s Trail”: Alan Berliner on his DOC NYC-debuting BENITA

Recipient of DOC NYC 2024’s Lifetime Achievement Award (as well as the 2025 Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at the upcoming Hamptons Doc Fest), the “virtuoso of essayistic documentary” Alan Berliner (Letter to the Editor, First Cousin Once Removed) returns to this year’s fest with BENITA, an unconventional portrait of an even more unconventional artist. Benita Raphan was a NYC filmmaker (and a MacDowell fellow in 2004 and a Guggenheim fellow in 2019) best known for her own short portraits of eccentric artists, from John Nash, to Buckminster Fuller, to Emily Dickinson. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts, Raphan crossed the pond to earn her MFA from London’s Royal College of Art; and would go on to spend a decade as a graphic designer in Paris before returning home in the mid-’90s to teach at her alma mater. An accomplished creative in several mediums, her works are now in the collections of the Walker Art Center as well as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Raphan was also a very early pick for Filmmaker‘s "25 New Faces" series, appearing on the list in 1998. That was the public face of Benita Raphan, who was also a beloved daughter, sister and lifelong friend to many who appear as interviewees in BENITA. These include Berliner’s wife, who first introduced her husband to the talented multi-hyphenate, who in turn became his own friend and protégé. Indeed, Raphan considered Berliner her key mentor; which is why, after she took her own life at the height of the COVID lockdowns in 2021, her grieving family turned to the master documentarian to finish her last film. It was an impossible task since, as Berliner put it, “I could never duplicate the mystery and beauty that Benita always brought to her work.” So instead of completing a final act, Berliner chose to craft a collaboration, a magical cinematic conversation of sorts, between himself and his mentee. (For Filmmaker‘s print edition, Berliner wrote about making BENITA while it was in production.) Through a jam-packed archival journey comprised of films, photos, notebooks, drawings, music and more, Berliner immerses us in the ups and downs of Raphan’s life, and in his own heartfelt struggle to piece together the puzzle of her death. A few weeks before the November 14th DOC NYC premiere of BENITA, Filmmaker reached out to the acclaimed director, whose own extensive oeuvre is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.