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APRIL 19: Regarding Susan Sontag by Nancy Kates (2014)

Three years ago marked the premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival of a documentary called Regarding Susan Sontag, which retraces the life and work of the famed writer and thinker. Regarding Susan Sontag blends archival footage and photographs with interviews (notably with Harriet Sohmers Zwerling and Judith Sontag Cohen), to produce a complex depiction of Sontag. Patricia Clarkson does voiceover for quotes from Sontag’s texts. It got funding from major cultural organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Sundance Documentary Film Program. Regarding Susan Sontag is a wonderful and layered movie that really sheds light on the multi-faceted life of Susan Sontag, so if you’re into wlw documentaries, definitely check it out.

Regarding Susan Sontag trailer

Regarding Susan Sontag was directed by Nancy Kates, an independent filmmaker, producer, writer, and consultant from the Bay Area, who’s been working all her life on projects that center marginalized figures. She graduated with honors in 1984 from Harvard, and attended grad school at Stanford’s film program. Her 1995 Master’s Thesis tells the complex stories and identities of five American women who served in the Vietnam War (including a couple who met while serving there). This was the start in a long list of praise and awards. Aside from Regarding Susan Sontag, Kates is also well-known for her film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a documentary about the groundbreaking gay civil rights leader, which premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Bennett Singer co-produced this film, which also received high praise and numerous accolades, such as the 2004 GLAAD Media Award, best feature film at New York’s New Festival, and many audience awards at all the major US LGBT film festivals.

Watch a Q&A with Nancy Kates about Regarding Susan Sontag right here (and you’ll find a couple more on Youtube):

Q&A with Nancy Kates at the 2014 Sheffield Doc/Fest

-AK

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JANUARY 16: Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

Generally regarded as one of the US’s foremost intellectuals of the 20th century, Susan Sontag’s rich legacy also highlights the way LGBT women may see their queerness erased from public discourse.

Still from the Regarding Susan Sontag documentary

Sontag first came to fame with her essay “Notes on Camp” (published in the Partisan Review in 1964), which analyzed camp as a specific aesthetic phenomenon. She went on to publish several notorious books (nonfiction, fiction, and plays) on themes that ranged from photography and culture to AIDS and human rights: among others, Against Interpretation (1966), Styles of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), The Way We Live Now (1990), In America (1999), and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). She also got actively involved in many political issues, visiting and writing about areas of conflicts, such as Vietnam and Sarajevo. Her commitment to tackling a broad range of issues, bridging through her work the intellectual and the activist worlds, and the first impressions she often made as hostile, aloof, condescending, earned her quite a reputation – she definitely drew ire and criticism for a few of her positions. Sontag’s journals have also been published – Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963 and As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964–1980, both edited by her son David Reiff. They give us a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of her mind, the questions she tussled with, the premises of texts she wrote.

Reading about her life, you immediately get the feeling of a powerful mind, that seeks nourishment from all sources. Her father died when she was 5; her mother remarried, and Susan took on her stepfather’s name: from Rosenblatt to Sontag. Early on, she lost herself in books, dedicated herself to the intellectual life. She married at 17, to a professor 10 years older than her, after just a few dates; she had a son with him; she left him nine years later, when her son turned seven. She needed something else, though it’s hard to say she truly found it in her career – which often felt to her as a kind of impersonation. She suffered from something akin to impostor syndrome. Fiction helped her feel less stifled, liberated her to experiment more in her writing.

Still from the Regarding Susan Sontag documentary

When she passed away, controversy arose because many of her obituaries barely mentioned her relationships, even though she had lived with well-known figures like María Irene Fornés, the Cuban-American playwright, Lucinda Childs, the dancer, or Annie Leibovitz, the photographer, with whom she spent more or less the last fifteen years of her life. In this sense, her bisexuality has been a point of debate. Not that it’s up for debate – in a 2000 interview with The Guardian, she was fairly open and straightforward about it, even though she kept denying that Annie Leibovitz and her were anything more than close friends. Rather, she acknowledged the complexity of labels, of the coming out process in remarks she made to Brendan Lemon, the editor-in-chief of OUT:

“I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret'. I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder if I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up.”

People justify the continued erasure of her sexuality because who cares about labels anyway? How did her being bi matter to the genius of her work? While I do understand the rationale behind the “I don’t want to be seen as a gay writer, but just as a writer,” things are, of course, more complex than that. We’re never just writers. Our identities – the ones we construct for ourselves and the ones we’re imposed – don’t go away when we write and publish and interact with others. To me, Sontag’s life and work is a reminder of the importance of representation and visibility. Dismissing discussions about her sexuality as something not relevant to her work, or unfounded speculations, means dismissing her own articulation of her identity.

For further reading, you can also check out the Susan Sontag Foundation, Sigrid Nunez’s 2011 memoir Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag, as well as the documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Nancy Kates, called Regarding Susan Sontag, which premiered in 2014, and which we’ll review later in the year. And if you’re in the mood for some intense intellectual conversation about storytelling, here’s the recording of an hour-long conversation between John Berger and Susan Sontag!

- AK

Regarding Susan Sontag Screens At Napa Valley College On January 29, Score Album Available On CD March 10

Regarding Susan Sontag Documentary Screens In Napa Valley, Score By Laura Karpman & Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum Available Now

If you’re going to be in northern California on Thursday, January 29, here’s your chance to screen Regarding Susan Sontag, the compelling documentary by Nancy Kates which aired on HBO over December. Get details at the Napa Valley Register. The Regarding Susan Sontagsoundtrack…

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#HBO Documentaries #Laura Karpman #Nancy Kates #Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum #Regarding Susan Sontag #Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag: Documentary About ‘A Rock Star Of Intellectuals’ Airs On HBO Throughout December, Soundtrack Feat. Laura Karpman & Nora-Kroll Rosenbaum Coming Soon

A highly watchable film…Kates also dresses the screen with poetical visual interludes — animated type resolving into a portrait of the writer, a naked female torso to accompany Sontag’s sexual realizing that she liked women in a way she hadn’t liked men. (It wasn’t until 2000 that she publicly acknowledged her bisexuality.) These moves are not strictly necessary, but they give the film a dreaminess that suits the subject and complements the grainier, rougher archival footage.

-Robert Lloyd, LA Times

If you missed Regarding Susan Sontag directed by Nancy Kates which made its exclusive premiere on HBO on Monday night, you can catch it at the following airdates:

HBO Airdates:

December 11 (3:30 p.m.) December 13 (4:15 p.m.) December 17 (5:30 p.m.) December 22 (11:55 p.m.) December 28 (2:00 p.m.) December 30 (9:30 a.m.)

HBO2 Airdates:

December 10 (8:00 p.m.) December 15 (1:40 p.m.) December 18 (12:50 a.m.) December 27 (10:00 a.m.)

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Stay tuned for more on the soundtrack to Regarding Susan Sontag, featuring the score by composers Laura Karpman & Nora-Kroll Rosenbaum.

Don’t miss a beat: subscribe to Film Music Daily!

Recipient of a Special Jury Mention at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, Regarding Susan Sontag features a rich collection of archival materials, evocative imagery and accounts from friends, family, colleagues and lovers – including Sontag’s sister, Judith Sontag Cohen, authors Stephen Koch, Eva Kollisch, Fran Leibowitz and Sigrid Nunez, and poet Wayne Koestenbaum – and Sontag’s work, read by Patricia Clarkson.

Passionate and gracefully outspoken, Susan Sontag was a prominent literary, political and feminist icon. As a critic, novelist, teacher, filmmaker, activist and iconoclast, her love of learning and examinations of cultural and political ideas made her both a compelling public figure and a significant 20th-century critic. A complex person, Sontag fiercely guarded her privacy, despite her boldness in the literary world.

Watch Regarding Susan Sontag on HBO (check local listings).

#soundtracks #music #composers #Regarding Susan Sontag #Nancy Kates #Laura Karpman #NoraKrollRosenbaum #hbo documentary #documentary #Susan Sontag

My review of the doc movie about Susan Sontag: “Regarding Susan Sontag” directed by Nancy Kates (Tribeca Film Festival 2014 World Documentary Feature Competition - Best Documentary Feature: Special Jury Mention) for Looped Magazine!/

Moja recenzja filmu o Susan Sontag: “Regarding Susan Sontag” w reżyserii Nancy Kates (Tribeca Film Festival 2014 World Documentary Feature Competition - Best Documentary Feature: Special Jury Mention) dla magazynu Looped!

Regarding Susan Sontag/

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped-en---regarding-susan-sontag.html

Być jak Susan Sontag

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped---byc-jak-susan-sontag.html

Read and share!/

Czytajcie i udostępniajcie!

http://loopedmag.com/

Offiicial website:

http://sontagfilm.org/

Trailer:

http://sontagfilm.org/trailer/

https://vimeo.com/91006541

Press quotes:

http://sontagfilm.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/RSS-Press-Quotes.5.pdf

#Looped #Regarding Susan Sontag #Nancy Kates #Tribeca Film Festival 2014 #Susan Sontag #documentary film #Być jak Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag/

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped-en---regarding-susan-sontag.html

Być jak Susan Sontag

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped---byc-jak-susan-sontag.html

Read and share!/

Czytajcie i udostępniajcie!

http://loopedmag.com/

Offiicial website:

http://sontagfilm.org/

Trailer:

http://sontagfilm.org/trailer/

https://vimeo.com/91006541

Press quotes:

http://sontagfilm.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/RSS-Press-Quotes.5.pdf

#Looped #Regarding Susan Sontag #Nancy Kates #Tribeca Film Festival 2014 #Susan Sontag #documentary film #Być jak Susan Sontag

dactylo/folio_Looped 2014: a film review of the documentary "Regarding Susan Sontag"

My review of the doc movie about Susan Sontag: "Regarding Susan Sontag" directed by Nancy Kates (Tribeca Film Festival 2014 World Documentary Feature Competition - Best Documentary Feature: Special Jury Mention) for Looped Magazine!/

Moja recenzja filmu o Susan Sontag: "Regarding Susan Sontag" w reżyserii Nancy Kates (Tribeca Film Festival 2014 World Documentary Feature Competition - Best Documentary Feature: Special Jury Mention) dla magazynu Looped!

Regarding Susan Sontag/

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped-en---regarding-susan-sontag.html

Być jak Susan Sontag

http://loopedmag.com/issue3/looped---byc-jak-susan-sontag.html

Read and share!/

Czytajcie i udostępniajcie!

http://loopedmag.com/

Offiicial website:

http://sontagfilm.org/

Trailer:

http://sontagfilm.org/trailer/

https://vimeo.com/91006541