Don’t Blink – Robert Frank. 2015. USA. Directed by Laura Israel. DCP. 82 min.
Moving back and forth in time, Don’t Blink is a densely woven portrait of Robert Frank by one of the people who knew him best, his longtime editor Laura Israel. ”I felt like I had the opportunity to provide some insight into his creative process,” she noted. “You sit next to someone for that long and you see the outtakes and the footage, you see what their thought process is, you get a really good perspective on how they make artistic choices.” Nonetheless, the famously headstrong and impish artist would constantly keep her off balance. Changing plans for a day’s shoot? “He would do that on purpose just to shake us up a little and have things happen more organically,” Israel would recall. Assisting her on this challenging and deeply illuminating enterprise was the art director and co-editor Alex Bingham—her partner, as well, on Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage, now on view in the Titus galleries—as well as the producer Melinda Shopsin and the cinematographers Lisa Rinzler (Pollock, Buena Vista Social Club) and Ed Lachman (Far from Heaven, Lightning over Water).
preceded by
Fearless Frank. 2024. USA. Directed by Laura Israel, Alex Bingham. World premiere. DCP. 20 min.
What was it like working with Robert Frank? Laura Israel and Alex Bingham, in partnership with the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, asked a number of his collaborators in photography and filmmaking to reflect on this deceptively simple question. Sid Kaplan, June Leaf, Ed Grazda, Gary Leon Hill, Susan Steinberg, Brian Graham, Ayumi Furuta (A-chan), Ed Lachman, and Tom Jarmusch all make appearances.