David Holzman's Diary

Jim McBride's 1967 film follows a director keeping a diary. David Holzman decides to film his own life, sets the camera up in his room, shoots people in the street, records his girlfriend while she sleeps and says he is doing all this to understand himself. She will not accept it and leaves him; he keeps filming and eventually loses his camera. What the film is really about is that turning a camera on does not capture reality but distorts it. It is fiction from beginning to end and did not say so at its first screenings, so some viewers believed they were watching a real diary. In that respect it counts as an early criticism of the personal video and reality programming that spread in later years. It is short and was made on almost no budget. Who it's for: viewers who like experimental cinema and films about documentary form. Who it's not for: anyone expecting narrative; the film proceeds as an imitation of a diary.