In 1973, Susan Sontag travelled to post-war Israel to film a documentary. As Promised Lands returns to the big screen, Steve Rose finds out how the movie holds up today
Did Susan Sontag enjoy making Promised Lands, her fragmented documentary about the 1973 Yom Kippur war? Shortly after its completion, and its less than enthusiastic reception, she wrote: "Film-making is nitpicking, anxiety, fights, claustrophobia, exhaustion, euphoria. Film-making is catching inspiration out on the wing. Film-making is flubbing the catch, and sometimes knowing the fool that's to blame is yourself. Film-making is blind instinct, petty calculations, smooth generalship, daydreaming, pigheadedness, grace, bluff, risk."
It can't have been easy for her. Sontag, who died in 2004, was best known as the "dark lady of American letters", the producer of influential essays, novels, short stories and plays. But in writing so authoritatively about culture, photography and every aspect of cinema, from sci-fi to the nouvelle vague,...
Did Susan Sontag enjoy making Promised Lands, her fragmented documentary about the 1973 Yom Kippur war? Shortly after its completion, and its less than enthusiastic reception, she wrote: "Film-making is nitpicking, anxiety, fights, claustrophobia, exhaustion, euphoria. Film-making is catching inspiration out on the wing. Film-making is flubbing the catch, and sometimes knowing the fool that's to blame is yourself. Film-making is blind instinct, petty calculations, smooth generalship, daydreaming, pigheadedness, grace, bluff, risk."
It can't have been easy for her. Sontag, who died in 2004, was best known as the "dark lady of American letters", the producer of influential essays, novels, short stories and plays. But in writing so authoritatively about culture, photography and every aspect of cinema, from sci-fi to the nouvelle vague,...
- 4/23/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
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