Side by Side

(USA, 2012, 89 mins)

Producer: Justin Szlasa, Keanu Reeves
Featuring: Keanu Reeves, Steven Soderbergh, James Cameron, David Lynch, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Michael Chapman ASC, Vittorio Storaro ASC, Vilmos Zsigmond ASC, Michael Ballhaus ASC, Walter Murch ACE, Ellen Kuras ASC, David Stump ASC

Not Yet Rated

Remember typewriters and travelers' checks? Paperback books in bookstores? Fishing around for coins you could use in a phone booth? Remember loading film into your camera? Remember ten years ago? That's when Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones became the first commercially released digital—that is, no-film—"film."

Since then the art of "filmmaking" has been utterly transformed by digital technology. As director James Cameron says in this much anticipated documentary "film"—produced and presented by Keanu Reeves with writing and direction by Chris Kenneally (The Squid and the Whale, Cadillac Records)—"Film has been dead in my heart for ten years."

But not all the cinematic masters featured in this illuminating study have made the shift to digital so willingly. Says one: "I'm not going to trade my oil paints for a set of crayons!" Another: "There isn't an imaging technology that's superior to film, but we're being forced into transition."

Advantages of digital cinema include a widespread democratization of the art form that will have profound effects. Disadvantages include the lack of any way to archive today's movies long-term. For anyone who loves the art form, this doc is an indispensable under-the-hood look at a transformation that has already taken place, and what that transformation might trigger in years ahead. Does it mean we'll have to rename the Maui "Film" Festival?

- PW

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