Alan Bennett's Diaries

My Personal Funhouse Mirror

May 2023 •English

A look at past diary entries reveals a teenage girl's struggles with body image and depression

Strange Days Diary NYC

March 2024 •English

One neighborhood in New York City, March 2020: the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, the federal government is clueless, and life seems increasingly surreal. A month later, the city has become an epicenter of the pandemic as the death rate spirals upwards. Then the racial justice protests erupt... Strange Days Diary NYC is an intimate account of living through a disruptive, frightening, yet inspiring time.

Every Soul of my Body

April 2017 •Italian

After the passing of her mother, Lorena finds the diary that she kept all her life. The entries allow her to discover a different woman. Having grown up in the worship of her father who fought as a partisan during the war, Lorena realises that she must start digging in the secret story of her mother if she wants to understand aspects of her own life. The pages of the diary feel like a book from another time. Working as a nurse, her mother was covertly working for the partisans passing them intelligence that she astutely acquired from wounded German soldiers by administering more morphine than usually required to ease the pain.

Born In Summer

January 1998 •Japanese

A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.

Army of Lovers or Revolt of the Perverts

May 1979 •German

Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US.

Bidding Adieu: A Video Diary

April 1996 •English

In January 1996 filming began on a new episode of Doctor Who set in San Francisco, but shot in Vancouver, Canada. Sylvester McCoy flew out to join the production team to re-create his role as the Seventh Doctor and to hand over to Paul McGann. In this behind-the-scenes video diary, Sylvester gives us a personal account of his final days as the famous Timelord. Reminiscing about the "old days" and drawing comparisons with the experience of working on this latest adventure, he talks to Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook (Dr Grace Holloway) from the new production and Anneke Wills (Polly) from the show's past. All shot on Hi-8 camcorder.

Carta a Boris

December 2015 •Spanish

Writing late becomes usual, we are always too late. Boris was my alter ego and I was his alter ego. Now that he is no longer here, I can be honest.

Their Houses

December 2011 •English

Filmmaker Cam Archer examines and explores his ordinary, suburban neighborhood in search of hidden truths, new narratives and a better understanding of his fading, creative self. Combining heavily degraded video with personal photographs and real life neighbors, Archer re-imagines the concept of 'home video'. In an attempt to distance himself from his subjects, actress Jena Malone narrates the piece as Archer in the first person.

Fale Comigo Verão: O diário de um cineasta amador

June 2023 •Portuguese

For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.

Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor

April 2018 •English

This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.

unusual Red cardigan

July 2011 •English

The discovery of a VHS tape of the artist's films on eBay triggers obsessive speculation about the seller's identity.

Salóme

November 2014 •Icelandic

"Art was an important factor of my childhood, where I would spend time watching mama, through the threads. Today I am back in Iceland, watching her again - this time through the camera. We have not lived under the same roof since I was a teenager. I am 35, without children and a strong desire to make a film about her. Mum is not interested in being filmed. The film does not only deal with a mother - daughter relationship, but also a filmmaker and a subject with their own will." Salóme is Yrsa´s first documentary after finishing her master in creative documentary at Pompeu Fabra, iDEC, Barcelona.

S.P.I.T.: Squeegee Punks In Traffic

Invalid date •English

The narrative unfolds from the point-of-view of a single character named Roach. As part of the filmmaking process, he's been given a camera to document his world. The footage he gets is urgent, because there's a war against squeegee kids. This documentary is from the point of view of the kids themselves, in order to provide alternative voices. Roach's camera is positioned behind "enemy" lines: living in derelict buildings, squeegeeing for money, being hunted by police.

Dress Rehearsal for Utopia

January 2012 •Spanish

While Andrés searches for old movies in Mozambique, he feels haunted by ominous premonitions, anticipating bad news coming from Venezuela, his country, where his father is gravely ill.

That Way Madness Lies...

May 2017 •English

One woman and her family trek the broken mental health system in an effort to save her brother as he descends into madness. Beginning as a testimony of his sanity, his iPhone video diary ultimately becomes an unfiltered look at the mind of an untreated schizophrenic.

Lena

September 2021 •Swedish

Follows the story of the beloved and internationally acclaimed Swedish actress Lena Nyman, based on 17 paper bags with diaries that she left behind.

Home Improvements

January 1985 •English

Home Improvements, Robert Frank’s first video project, is a simple and poignant diary of consequential events. It is about the relationship between Frank’s life as an artist and his personal life, and how the two are inevitably intertwined. It was made cheaply with a half-inch video porta-pak. Home Improvements takes place in New York and Nova Scotia and in the mental space between these two opposing worlds

Diário da Pandemia

February 2022 •Portuguese

My Mexican Bretzel

December 2020 •Spanish

Lies are just another way of telling the truth. The desire to believe is the hand of the man hanging from a cliff and clinging to the only stone that would seem to save him. But he always ends up falling because the stone is a mirage, just as the cliff is. Death is awakening from this dream in which the essential can be said and in which the continuous and infinite has a beginning, an end and a meaning.

The Traces of Dr. Ernesto Guevara

August 2013 •Spanish

Between 1952 and 1953, the young doctor Ernesto Guevara de la Serna traveled through Latin America. This film is based on his diaries, the correspondence with his family and friends, and the testimonies of those who knew him and accompanied him on this journey. That trip through the open veins of Latin America led him to become the Che.