Interesting. Have not heard of this documentary before and am looking forward to viewing it. I love most of Welles' work, though think in many ways he was his own worst enemy. This man should have produced far more films than he did, though his ambition often caused him to bite off more than he could chew - Heart of Darkness, among many other projects.

There's a great independent video store in Dallas called Premiere Video - it's like a library, with one entire aisle of documentaries. I'm sure they will have F for Fake.

Chris, I must warn you: it's not for everybody--- and it takes multiple viewings to figure out what the heck is going on.

But it's also a pretty revolutionary approach to 'documentaries' ---and thus inspired the book above by Claudia Thieme.

I also agree re. Welles vs himself; the disaster in S. America was pretty pathetic. But if anybody can be said to be "ahead of his time" it was Welles.

Happy viewing.

I remember trying to get a copy of F for Fake for my lowly (in art elite pecking order terms) technical college (called here TAFE) students one day. I happened to be connected with a major University and able to access its special arts precint campus library (COFA in Sydney Australia). The librarian was less than amused - one can 'only take the video out for two hours and view it within the library precint she/he said' I protested and lied and said I wanted to show it to a group of students at the main campus (pretending they were students at the main campus which is about 2 kilometres away). 'Oh no' she/he said.

I was faced with this situation with one of the most typical of postmodern dilemmas- delicious irony coupled with a savage awareness that this whole elite art campus existed mostly to make the children of the elite feel arty. I.e. more than it existed for any other purpose ( such as it was not an institution dedicated to encouraging its students to go out and revive art activity in the spirit of the Renaissance style artists workshops).

So I decided to order the damn thing from the US - (non US version of course) otherwise I couldn't have used it. I showed it to my less than entirely elite audience at my lowly institution and I hope it had some effect. (Please no tiresome responses about Kant or 4th year art theory mixed with decision theory or similar).

I vaguely knew of the film's existence for some years (I am 47 now so I was in my late teens when it was made). I saw it during a period of prolonged under-employment on one of our local free to air state broadcasting stations here in Australia. I must admit I had consumed at the time one bottle plus perhaps a little more of relatively cheap domestic bubbly plus some cheap fish eggs and a few other associated items. I have since seen the flim about 12 times and always find it has something new to say each time (not always with domestic bubbly or even any other alcoholic stimulants).

I had then almost completed a part time PhD in which naturally I had focused in my theoretical area on chance (or nice chance in my case therefore serendipity) in my theory chapter.

I was therefore gratified to read the place given to chance and like in an earlier blog on this site. I agree with this blog that F for Fake does have a lot to say about this rather classical (even enduring) issue- an issue postmodernity has revived and driven back into more prominence than it had under modernistic scientism.

In terms of my acaemic journey I,of course, found myself frozen out of further consideration for preferment within that or any other faculty due to my obvious inability to 'grasp' modern day academic realities of being able to combine 'relevent' research with also doing a thesis based on Foucault or a worse on one of the other French theorists of post modernity -

The other alternative game theory and neo-con reinvented Bob McNamara talk -was just too horrible to contemplate - and that time our country was a wholehearted signatory to the Geneva Conventions!

Of course to just refer to the key issues as they are and then try to do a topic related to that- is something that was just too silly to do and I did it. I know from private discussions with genuine French academicians that maybe this is something - one can do in France or wherever the theory actually is understood as only a theory - and only the latest great contribution to knowledge. I.e unlike mostly here (and I imagine perhaps in the US at least quite a bit) where such ideas have been turned into a slavish repition of the sort of officialese that makes Elmyr's activities seem positively heroic creative and original by comparision. (As of course they are - in a sense- and this too is one of the messages of F for Fake).

I was also too old (what the English used to call an advanced student) and a part time student at that). Plus I also had a reputation as a conservative - and also had commited the unpradonable sin as said above of using the word and issue of chance as if it was a word like any other. I had not used whatever sub-cultural patois was required in terms of this word and what it is supposed to mean- in the opinion of those who thought they held my fate in their hands as they though they confined me to academic oblivion. (Although I did quote Touraine who I quite like- despite being a conservative of sorts)-and Mr H with the leiderhosen and Nazi Party badge and Hume and several obscure Hungarians. (I was finished from that point I know).

I was not like the art dealers examined in F for Fake 'playing whatever game is necessary' to be seen to be relevant to the local academic (or art) scene in their country.

None of that really bothered me as I have abandoned formal academia and will soon establish my own private school and will teach people (foreign students mostly) what I like when I like within the rules set down of course - (but this will include an annual screening of this film).

I contributed to one other blog sometime ago and called this film Welles's masterpiece. I believe it is. - Of course he has produced other masterpieces- but as a master one would hope that fate/Providence/Hollywood, his own super ego and whatever - would have allowed this to be the case.

Of course, if he had moved to Denmark or Sweden or Cuba or somewhere- and somehow dealt with them better than he dealt with everyone else he dealt with then he might have produced fifteen or twenty or more other masterpieces- or might not have.

F for Fake takes Welles into the postmodern I mean in the sense of Welles making a direct contribution to our thinking about postmodernity - not just as another 'thing' to be examined in the light of it.

F for Fake takes Welles into the heart of postmodern theory in the way similar sort of once dismissed as quaint and a bit not really 'up there' people like RG Collingwood have also found themselves back in the centre of the conversation - making an active contribution.

There are still interesting things said by people like Welles about originality, chance, randomness, providence, fate etc.,). For me F for Fake is not merely and only part of the academic school ideology mainstream discussion of these issues. It is not part of that sub-culture of those slavishly trying 'not to be fakes' (whether as neo-cons in the culture wars or their equal and opposiite opponents) - or worse the academic spruikers of the idea that 'we are all fakes' or whatever.

Welles at least is an artist who helps us to realise the beyond modern and beyond post modern implications of the words Shakespeare said about 'con-science' - 'making cowards of us all'. There I did it! I hyphenated a word and thereby joined the mainstream! I am well on my to a lecturer's job already!

F for Fake is a film I need to watch to innoculate me from the bullshit ( an Australian term) of all the people I blame or who may blame me or who ignore me or who do did nothing to me (but I thought they did) or those who ignore me because I (within things entirely under my control)just didnt do a few more of those things to make them damn well take me seriously.

Rather as Lucy (Lucille Ball) looked down - out of the TV screen - with pity on Welles in his last days. Welles apparently spent some of his last days in Peter Bogdanovich's living room mostly watching re-runs of I Love Lucy. Welles was apprently absorbed in Lucy's use of camera shots or dialogue or her cutting technique or whatever while munching something like breakfast cereal. (I believe it was). Or was it Oreos? ( a biscuit now unfortunately available in my pathetic little Australia - now a self-created ( you didn't ask us we begged you for entry) 51st state of your United States).

Welles may have been presaging postmodernism but he was definitely not telling us all - artists and indeed all people -to stop creating and responding to art, life and loving as bravely or as dastardly as the spirit takes us.

In that sense I believe that while postmodern we should not confine F for Fake to a sort of cupboard of resources for Art Theory 303 to be used for the next 30 years . As 30 years may well be the probable life left of what we call post modernity. F for Fake will survive post modernity - but it has something to contribute to it as well.