Finding Vivian Maier, John Maloof 2013
By Ali Tenenbaum
This doc is fascinating and extremely well done. It’s about an enigmatic woman named Vivian Maier (though she uses many aliases throughout her life) who turned out to be an incredibly prolific and excellent street photographer from the 1950’s through to the end of her life in the 1990’s. She also turned out to be a true eccentric.
John Maloof is a natural born documentarian and weaves together Vivian’s story though photos that he tracked down and interviews with people who knew her quite well. As a self-proclaimed obsessive-compulsive, Maloof was the perfect person to discover Vivian’s negatives and piece together her story as a nanny-cum-photographer. And a riveting story it is. Ultimately, one of the most interesting things is “meeting” the people that chose this mysterious and unusual woman to take care of their children. I suppose freaks, I mean eccentrics, are attracted to other eccentrics.
Grandma will love it for sure, the kid not so much.
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