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The Windmill Movie

Alexander Olch and Susan Meiselas in Person
Screening on Film
Directed by Alexander Olch.
With Wallace Shawn, Bob Balaban, Susan Meiselas.
US, 2009, 35mm, color, 82 min.
Print source: filmmaker

What if someone wrote your autobiography? 200 hours of footage, dusty boxes of film, a broken editing computer: these were the pieces of filmmaker Richard P. Rogers’ daring attempt to make his own autobiography. He died in 2001, leaving behind a lifetime of filmed memories, until his student and protégé, Alexander Olch began making a movie out of the pieces. Writing in his teacher’s voice, working with Wallace Shawn, Bob Balaban and Richard’s wife—acclaimed photographer Susan Meiselas—Olch steps into his mentor’s shoes and his past to make a film impossible to make. An autobiography that isn’t. A documentary of fiction. A lifetime of questions, finally answered.

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    Haden Guest, Alexander Olch and Susan Meiselas courtesy Anto Astudillo

The Windmill Movie introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Alexander Olch. ©Harvard Film Archive

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