Articles and Reviews

Praise for Ross McElwee’s PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

“Beguiling…What [McElwee] finds in “Photographic Memory” is utterly delightful.”
- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

“McElwee is a homespun philosopher who finds exceptional moments in everyday life and records it all through his camera lens.” - Leonard Maltin, Indiewire

“The most Proustian of Mr. McElwee’s documentaries.” - Stephen Holden, The New York Times

“Some might characterize what filmmaker Ross McElwee does as navel-gazing. But in the hands of this veteran documentarian, that which might be self-indulgent egomania from a lesser artist is often the stuff of quiet revelation…simple, genuinely moving.”
- Ian Buckwalter, NPR

“With droll wit and fearless instinct for turning an unblinking lens on his life’s minutiae, Ross McElwee continues his Socratic mandate of living a fully examined life with the assured and insightful “Photographic Memory,” in which the inevitable sojourn into his past once again helps him understand the present and brace for the future. The pic’s pleasures are subtle yet resonant.” -Eddie Cockrell, Variety

“One of Six Full Frame Documentaries You Must See! Twenty-five years after Sherman’s March, the godfather of the home-video documentary clashes with the YouTube age via his son.” -Robert Silva, Indiewire

“A sad, funny, homespun, often quite moving meditation on the passing of time and the evanescence of recorded memories.” - Screen Daily

“A bracing and sometimes uncomfortable peek into private fears and regrets about mortality and missed opportunities.” - Nick Schager, Village Voice

“As in his previous work, McElwee serves as his own subject, cameraman, interviewer and narrator, drawling his way through Brittany past and present; making new friends and sifting through his memories—both photo- and neurochemical—of the old ones he’s lost. It’s a personal journey, but one that speaks to universal ideas about aging, fatherhood and the way that “time wears on a photograph, erodes it, until all of its context is gone.” McElwee’s quietly reassuring voice dominates the film, but that doesn’t mean he can’t craft a magnificently eloquent image when he wants to.” - Matt Singer, Time Out NY

“An absorbing, bittersweet film…in the droll, earnest manner we’ve come to expect from McElwee.” - Alexander C. Kafka, Oxford American Magazine

“3.5 stars. Startlingly genuine. An elliptical, Sherman’s March-style odyssey through the director’s ever-morphing domestic selfhood.” - Joseph Jon Lanthier, Slant Magazine

“Photographic Memory is a documentary that is truly something special.” - Joshua Brinsting, Criterion Cast

“Ross McElwee adds another wonderful personal memoir, a film that is both forward-looking and elegiac…“Photographic Memory” is about the permanence and impermanence of what we choose to preserve: on film and in our heads (which is often the same thing). I would like to think that one day Adrian might look at this documentary and see it as a supreme act of paternal love. Grade: A “ - Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

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