2014 Directed by Nancy D. Kates
An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.
Ami Susan Sontagot illeti..., Susan Sontag - Storia di una scrittrice, O Suzan Zontag, Recordando a Susan Sontag, Sobre Susan Sontag, Разговор о Сьюзан Зонтаг, 关于苏珊·桑塔格
USA
Tribeca Film Festival
USA
USA
Formally uninteresting talking head doc that's more about romantic gossip than ideas, more interested in her image than her thoughts, which I imagine would have really annoyed Sontag.
I wish I had seen this when it came out. It's a documentary on one of the most important voices of a generation. She may be a feminist, writer, but she hated being called a "woman writer". As things have evolved, I love hearing from women who are writers: someone who speaks for me. Back in the day, it seemed like the label was one more way to demean women.
Also, I'm kind of jealous, because she started writing in the 1960s. She even says that it paid to be young in the 1960s, to comment on the culture and fashion and so forth.
”If there were no speaking or writing, there'd be no truth about anything.”
She's kind of…
Accessible in ways that would repulse Sontag, with far more attention devoted to her celebrity status than her ideas. That it presents Sontag as a relic of her time means the film ends with a double death – yes, the loss of a vital creator, but also the sense that having watched these 100 minutes, we’ve closed the book on her.
39/100
“Did the author of Notes on Camp really need to come out?”
thanks Aaron. this is a shout-out to Aaron
Sontag once wrote, "my desire to write is connected with my homosexuality" which I thought Regarding Susan Sontag took to heart too much. it is a sloppy documentary on a fascinating and controversial thinker focusing mostly on her seemingly endless string of liaisons with women. this came off as quite obsessive at that and somehow bordered lesbian melodrama a la The L Word. it also scarcely touched on her works, only including clips from her interviews often trimmed down not to exhibit her intellect as a writer / philosopher but her qualities as a person whilst loud strings and trumpets played in the background as if a shoutout to avant-garde Jazz.
despite disagreeing with some of her thought-provoking ideas, it's…
"Being photographed… I feel transfixed, trapped… I become the looked-at… For as much as I am a professional seer, I am a hopelessly amateur see-ee. An eternal photographic virgin. I feel the same perplexity each time I’m photographed."
way too much about 60's the L word drama and not nearly enough about her actual writing, which is sad because when are we ever going to get patricia clarkson reading excerpts from 'notes of camp' ever again?
