Tuesday, May 19, 2015

David Holzman's Diary (1967)

Today's film is David Holzman's Diary.  This film is of great historical significance because it features the world's first vlogger.

David wants to make a video diary about his life.  He has lots of neat equipment: a videocamera, sound recorder, and microphone, all adding up to 19 pounds he carries around everywhere.  This is very interesting because we can see how far technology has come.  I can film myself on my iPod touch, which has a much better camera and weighs less than a pound.

The problem is that David has nothing to say.  He wants to film himself and his girlfriend, but she is having none of that.  He disrespects her wishes and films her asleep, so she leaves.  So now he's all alone.  Lots of people have vlogs now.  They can be about anything.  It can be about someone's interesting life, a journey across the country, raising kids, or hobbies.  But David's blog is literally about nothing.  In the end, he realizes this and gets frustrated with himself.  He doesn't properly lock up his equipment and they get stolen while he is out of town.  So that's the end of the movie.

This movie may seem like a documentary, but it's actually a film with a script. The people are just actors.  It looks realistic so I will give it a 6/10.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, this was an odd one. As a fake documentary, it's noteworthy, but as you say, he could have come up with more interesting subject matter.