“The illusion of immortality”: A Photographic Memory

Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s A Photographic Memory is a very intimate investigation into the life of a globetrotting journalist (and photographer and filmmaker) whose interviews with legendary lensers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks and Lisette Model formed the basis for a trailblazing audiovisual series you’ve likely never heard of. Though “Images of Man” was produced with the renowned International Center of Photography founder Cornell Capa and Scholastic, the eight-part program (each episode pairing a photographer’s images with descriptions of their philosophies in their own words) had been time-capsuled in the ICP archives since 1979; at the behest of the journo’s grieving widower, Time-Life photographer Brian Seed, who sent the raw materials to the center for safekeeping upon the sudden death of his wife at the age of 42.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

‘My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow’ Review: A Scary and Riveting Portrait of Russia’s Last Independent News Channel

“Sadism disguised with the lacework of words” is how Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist with TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, describes Putin’s twisting of phrases in “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.” And “being at the right place at the right time — or the wrong place at the wrong time,” is how “The Loneliest Planet” director Julia Loktev has described the circumstances that led to the documentary she’s made about Nemzer’s work. First conceived as a look at the daily lives of reporters who’ve been branded “foreign agents” by their own government, the essence of the project — now a five-part, five-and-a-half-hour epic — was profoundly transformed four months into production, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine.

To read the rest of my New York Film Festival review visit IndieWire.