NOTFILM (2015) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Ross Lipman
"I've never trusted films about film," is the first thing director Ross Lipman says in this documentary, which is an odd start to a movie that's not just about film, but about "Film", the 20-minute, avant-garde experiment Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton worked on together in 1964. There's more abstraction here than most viewers will be able to absorb, or want to, and "Film" remains as baffling as ever, but "Notfilm" at least provides a few clues about what's going on in it. Kevin Brownlow, Billie Whitelaw, Leonard Maltin and Haskell Wexler are among the witnesses, and the archival footage includes clips from Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera" and numerous Keaton films.
