COMMENTS
“Notfilm is a definitive documentary account of the making of Samuel Beckett’s only film work and a brilliant examination of its significance in relation to Beckett’s dramatic works and to film theory. Lipman very persuasively and masterfully shows Film's continuing importance.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum
“Film is an intriguing and vital document in Samuel Beckett’s life-long engagement and fascination with perception, and the image. And Ross Lipman’s Notfilm, using unique material never seen or heard before, strikingly brings to life the genesis of Film, Beckett’s only foray into the cinematic medium.” — Mark Nixon, Co-Director, Beckett International Foundation, The University of Reading; President, Samuel Beckett Society
“I am lost in admiration for this work … the film is ambitious, thrilling and illuminating. It represents an invaluable addition to Beckett scholarship. Notfilm is a superb film.” — James Knowlson, OBE Beckett’s authorized biographer and founder of the Samuel Beckett Archive
“NotFilm offers a fascinating glimpse into the making of Beckett's Film including interviews, new recordings of the author in discussion, and reconstructed moments from its lost opening. Through the medium of the kino-essay NotFilm opens up a creative dialogue between Film and the film histories and possibilities that inspired it.” —Anna McMullan, University of Reading, Co-Director of the Beckett International Foundation
"A two hour documentary film about a half hour film sounds ridiculous, but not if the film is Samuel Beckett's Film. The confluence of Beckett, Buster Keaton and Alan Schneider is joined by Ross Lipman, who functions here as a cultural archaeologist of the highest order. Notfilm joins the very short list of great movies about the movies." - historian and author Scott Eyman (Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise)
“Ross Lipman has crafted a documentary worthy of the legacy of two towering cultural icons, Samuel Beckett and Barney Rosset. A combination of sensitivity and astonishing, outstanding scholarship--the product of a decade's worth of detective work--makes this an essential contribution to approaching an understanding of Beckett and his American publisher, with onionskin layers of meaning that take it far beyond. Lipman not only unearthed facts, clips, and recordings that will be new to Beckettistas, but his framing of the whole--his visible but not intrusive presence as an intelligent documentarian within the film--makes this as close to 'true' as you can get. Unless you were on the set of Film in 1964 (and perhaps even then), Notfilm will deepen your understanding of what happened.” — John Oakes, editor Evergreen Review, publisher OR Books
"Notfilm is like a box-within-a-box-within-a-box, -- there's always another layer for those who know how to look." - Artur Liebhart, director, Docs Against Gravity Festival
"A beautiful film. I like the form of it so very much—the music and visual texture; the way it meanders and yet not at all; how everyone is losing their memory. Images fade, bridges collapse; people meet their doubles and fail to notice. In telling the story of the making of Film , a movie about perception made by two artistic geniuses who cannot see eye-to-eye, Ross Lipman creates a symphonic work on seeing and notseeing." - Elana Greenfield, author, At the Damascus Gate: Short Hallucinations
"One of the best films ever made about another film; a truly vital critique of its already inseparable Film." - Jaime Pena, BAFICI