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Movies & TV

>>> The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography

DOCS D: Errol Morris. U.S. 76 min. Sep 14, 4:45 pm, Isabel Bader  Sep 16, 8:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1. Rating: NNNN


Morris’s latest character study is a profile of Boston photographer Elsa Dorfman, whose large-format Polaroid images are so intimate and vivid, they seem to breathe. Dorfman, now in her late 70s, is a wonderful subject, discussing her career and her work with a matter-of-factness that belies her professional standing and historical cachet. (A close friend of Allen Ginsberg, she hung out with the beats in New York and captured some iconic images of a skinny folksinger named Bob Dylan.)

The B-Side isn’t about the famous people Dorfman has known clearly impelled by the waning of traditional photography and the demise of Polaroid, Morris is meditating on the impermanence of the image and the inexorable march of time. The film is suffused with an awareness of our mortality.

Not that his subject will acknowledge it. Short-circuiting any self-seriousness and using food metaphors to explain her theories of art, Dorfman gives The B-Side life and energy. She’s giggling against the dying of the flashbulb.

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