News

Over his nearly 40 years as a documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris has conducted in-depth, direct-to-camera interviews with criminals (both guilty and falsely convicted), grieving pet owners, Florida eccentrics, Abu Ghraib soldiers, eminent scientists (including Stephen Hawking), and not one but two men who formerly held the position of U.S. secretary of defense. Artists, however, have been conspicuous in their absence. Until now, the sole example to be found among Morris’ features was topiary gardener George Mendonça, who shares 1997’s Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control with two scientists and a lion tamer. So it’s surprising to see Morris devote an entire movie to Elsa Dorfman, a portrait photographer best known for her regular use of Polaroid’s largest instant camera. Arguably, Dorfman would have made a better fit for Morris’ half-hour First Person TV series—even at only 76 minutes, The B-Side feels a tad overextended—but ...