Regarding Susan Sontag

Nancy D. Kates's 2014 documentary is about the writer and critic Susan Sontag. She began writing young, and her books on photography, illness and war took a place in twentieth-century thought. The documentary does not look only at the work. Sontag's relationships, her silence about her sexuality and how she constructed her public persona sit inside the narrative, and her friends and lovers discuss them openly. Her writing is read by Patricia Clarkson. Archive material takes wide space. The narrative also carries some of her political interventions and the hard reactions they drew, and does not exalt its subject. Who it's for: those who follow literary and intellectual history. Who it's not for: viewers who do not know Sontag's writing; the documentary does not explain the books in detail.