Notfilm(Movie, 2015)

Notfilm is a 2015 feature-length documentary, directed by Ross Lipman on the production of playwright Samuel Beckett's only film, an experimental short titled Film starring Buster Keaton. While conducting preliminary research to restore Film, filmmaker and restorationist Ross Lipman visited Grove Press founder and Film producer Barney Rosset at his apartment, where Lipman discovered reels of film and audio. This material contained outtakes from Beckett's 1965 production, including a prologue long-thought lost. Notfilm reconstructs this prologue and integrates rare audio of Beckett's voice, surreptitiously recorded by Rosset, in a self-described "Kino Essay" that analyzes the philosophical foundation of Film, arguing it was an expression of Samuel Beckett's own distaste for the public eye. ()