David Holzman's Diary

Filmmaker: Jim McBride

Year: 1967

Run Time: 73 minutes

Jim McBride's brilliant cinéma vérité-esque independent film follows the titular character (charmingly portrayed by L.M. Kit Carson) as he documents his life. As news from the Vietnam War and social unrest blares over the radio, Holzman unloads comic-neurotic monologues to his 16mm camera. When his relationship with Penny (Eileen Dietz) goes south, he retreats further into moving images, secretly recording his pretty neighbor and even turning his lens to the TV shows he watches. No longer able to deal with life outside celluloid, all of his ties to the real world begin to erode. DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY is one of the most influential films of the 1960s and (according to the New York Times) "a totally delightful satire" that "mocks those ghastly reels from the nineteen-sixties, when various filmmakers immortalized themselves or their friends by trying and failing to be spontaneous." Inducted in 1991 to the National Film Registry, the film was recently restored by the Pacific Film Archive.