Separation of the Critic - A Trip with Raya Martin

Directed by Michael Guarneri

August 11th 2011 was one of the best days of my life: I had a trip with my father to Locarno, where I met and interviewed Raya Martin, a director I deeply respect and admire – definitely one of my heroes. My first idea was to produce the classical “auteur profile” documentary (full-coverage interview occasionally featuring archive images), but since I was having such an inspiring and exciting chat with Raya I realized that the “institutional” approach was way too cold and inappropriate: why not present a film theory essay as if it was a home movie? After all, it was me and my father on a holiday trip... Thus, in my little, amateurish instant-movie I applied Raya's “autohystoric” (autohysteric?) method as naively as possible, hoping to put forward a manifesto for a cinema lived on your own skin.