Sunday, May 29, 2011
First Thought Films
Bill Cunningham captures a scene on a street in New York City in the documentary "Bill Cunningham New York."
Cross a monk with an elf and you have Bill Cunningham, a one-time millinery wizard who migrated into the world of photography in order to create a decades-long social document about New York's vibrant street fashion.
Along the way, he has also presided as the eyes of a world that wants to track the insiders who make the city run. As the creator of "On the Street" and "Evening Hours," two New York Times weekly photo essays, he has become an important thread in the fabric of the city.
- Rating: No MPAA rating but PG-13 in nature.
Now, he is the subject of "Bill Cunningham New York," a documentary film that followed him as he traversed Manhattan's streets on his 29th bicycle (28 were stolen) just before he faced eviction from the tiny live/work studio he filled in Carnegie Hall.
A true candid project, the filming was done on small consumer video cameras, without sound crews and lighting staffs, in order to watch Bill travel the streets and shoot what triggered his razor-sharp fashion sense.
Director Richard Press has captured a wonderful portrait of a man so totally devoted to his quest that he slept on a makeshift bed among an army of filing cabinets in a studio sans kitchen and like an older New York City, with bath on the floor.
Mr. Press intersperses the film with old photos, animations of Mr. Cunningham's essays and interviews with normally reticent members of the fashion community.
Among them are Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue; author Tom Wolfe; and fellow Carnegie Hall studio resident Editta Sherman, a then 96-year-old photographer. Like Mr. Cunningham, she faced eviction from her studio after a lifetime of being both photographer and photographed -- having been a fashion model and a film subject for Andy Warhol.
Mr. Press' method of revealing the protagonist is not done as a simple narrative statement but instead places him at the center of a swirl of characters who have had some impact on his life and work.
The film moves from the streets of the city, to the offices of The New York Times, to Mr. Cunningham's apartment and finally to the runway shows and streets of Paris before the final tough questions about Mr. Cunningham's life are put to him. He reveals a philosophy of beauty and fashion, bordering on the obsessive, which, as the film concludes, places Mr. Cunningham alone, on the street, looking for the next image or trend.
Given the difficulties of shooting a subject who was, for years, adamant about not being watched, Mr. Press has managed to reveal the passion and petulance of Mr. Cunningham. He comes across as caring and cantankerous, especially as his photo spreads are assembled for the paper and the camera watches him direct the rearranging of images to suit his finely tuned sense of style.
In the 1980s, while working in New York as a photographer, I occasionally ran into the blue-coated Mr. Cunningham as I searched for intimate candids of New Yorkers. He said little, and I respected his privacy.
And with Richard Press' documentary, I now know much more (but only as much as he wants us to know) about the man in the French street-sweeper jacket.
Opens today at the Regent Square Theater.
Post-Gazette photographer Larry Roberts: lroberts@post-gazette.com.First published on May 27, 2011 at 12:00 am
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11147/1149409-120.stm?cmpid=movievideo.xml
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