A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR MEMBERS EVENT – FREE FOR MEMBERS, regular prices for non-members. One free ticket per member, two for dual members. IMPORTANT: Please reserve online.
While refusing to adhere to Hollywood conventions or the demands of its executives, Robert Altman’s unique style of filmmaking won him friends and enemies, earned him international acclaim and occasional scathing criticism, and over a five decade-long career helped reshape moviemaking with technical and aesthetic contributions to the evolution of the art form. Ron Mann’s Altman tells the story, primarily in the directors own words. 2014, Canada, 96 minutes, documentary
Post-film discussion: Rivertown Film Executive Director Matthew Seig was one of two consultants on Altman (the other was the director’s wife). He is editor of a book of photographs and essays of the same title published by Abrams Books in December, and he manages commercial use of the Altman Archive at the University of Michigan, an important source ofmaterial in the film and book. After the film he will give a brief presentation on the film, book, archive, and Robert Altman’s legacy with slides of unusual and unseen material.
“Given the who’s-who of collaborators and acolytes of the late Robert Altman assembled for this feature-length tribute, it would have been all too easy for director Ron Mann to let the film turn into a loose, digressive—indeed, 
Altmanesque—jamboree of war stories and portable wisdom. But to great, stirring effect, Altman charts a different course, drawing on a wealth of existing material to tell the filmmaker’s story largely in his own, brashly eloquent words, and through generous clips from his massive, admittedly uneven, always uncompromising filmography.” – Scott Foundas, Variety
Altman would take the premise of Kurasawa’s Roshoman, that we all see things differently, and rework it in his film Nashville.
