David Holzman's Diary

Synopsis

"Among the most influential works of Sixties counter-cinema, McBride's remarkable debut film – made when he was a mere twenty-five-years old – stretches and ultimately subverts the cinema verité project to which the wunderkind director zealously pledged his, and his lightweight camera's, allegiance. David Holzman’s ambitious plan to capture the 24-times-per-second truth of his own life ignites his confrontational narcissism and naive faith in camera truth, imparting the film with a nervous energy and abandon. A vivid evocation of 1960s Manhattan often sweeps the film away, rupturing the long, ruminatory scenes in Holzman’s cramped apartment with dreamy, gliding passages through the city streets." – Harvard Film Archive

"David Holzman’s Diary is in fact a great work of synthesis summarizing the very notions of the film director as subject (and therefore as superstar) and the camera as tool of self-scrutiny that the 60s film explosion inspired. And its ambiguities about the various crossovers between documentary and fiction remain as up to date as the films of Kiarostami." – Jonathan Rosenbaum