The Windmill Movie has been described as everything from a raw footage diary and a documentary portrait to an experimental montage and a cinematic homage. Decide for yourself, because Zeitgeist released the film on DVD on March 22, 2011.
A truly genre-defying work, The Windmill Movie feels like a profile of documentary and experimental filmmaker Richard Rogers. A Harvard-educated, New York City baby boomer born to privilege, Rogers completed many remarkable films over the course of his career, including 1991’s Pictures From a Revolution. But his untimely death at age 57 in 2001 put an end to his magnum opus: an autobiographical movie he had worked on for 25 years.
Culling from a 200-hour trove of Rogers’ material, director Alex Olch (Rogers’ protégé) set out to complete Rogers’ unfinished film. The Windmill Movie plays like a mind-bending essay film constructed of sun-dappled Hamptons lawn parties, plane rides to exotic locales and raw moments with Rogers’ domineering mink-coated mother, plus archival audio and new footage featuring Rogers’ childhood friend, actor Wallace Shawn (Jack and the Beanstalk). Ultimately, it’s a cinematic amalgam of one filmmaker’s footage used by another filmmaker that beautifully explores the chasm between documentary and fiction.
The DVD contains the following special features:
- two previously unreleased Richard Rogers shorts: Elephants: Fragments of an Argument and 226-1690 (aka The Answering Machine Movie)
- original essay by critic Scott Foundas
The Windmill Movie DVD carries a suggested retail price of $29.95.
Buy or Rent The Windmill Movie
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