AFS Presents: The Windmill Movie

austinfilm.org

AFS Presents The Windmill Movie
Wednesday, September 16
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)
$4 for AFS Members/Students, $6 General, 7 p.m.
[info] | [tickets]

It’s a bittersweet tale&mdas;a creative spirit named Richard P. Rogers is born into a world of wealth and prominence and spends a lifetime attempting to document, illustrate and explain his own existence, yet he never finishes the self-assigned project. He amasses hours of video footage (lavish parties, pretty women, personal interviews) and simultaneously earns a reputation as a respectable documentarian and professor of experimental film, yet his true life’s work remains unfinished at the time of his death.

A few years later, Rogers’ widow and one of his most attuned students cross paths; their conversation and reexamination of Rogers’ incomplete work results in the idea to finish the self-portrait. Carefully and with the desire to channel Rogers’ intentions, they arrange the scenes, include voice-over narration of Rogers’ diary entries, and insert a few reenactments, too, performed by none other than Wallace Shawn. They pay tribute to the man they loved but they do not gloss over his flaws. Finally his film is finished. A sense of peace can now hopefully replace the frustration that has been palpable for so long.

So there you have it. A lifetime of tilting at windmills has resulted in a multi-layered work of quiet beauty. One man’s life—and the painstaking work of that life—can now be seen a little more clearly.

Alexander Olch, Rogers’ student who helped complete the documentary, will be in attendance on Wednesday night and will participate in a Q&A. Also, showing along with The Windmill Movie is The Quarry, a short film by Rogers that features children playing at a Massachusetts swimming hole in 1967.