(PCM) Academy Award-winning writer-director-editor Chuck Workman brings iconic Citizen Kane director Orson Welles to life through audio recordings, rare archive footage, and interviews in his documentary, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles.
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave Magician a great review after its premiere the 2014 Telluride Film Festival, praising Workman’s deep pulls of international archival footage and other rare primary sources to give his audience a somewhat new and full portrait of Orson Welles.
“An in-depth study of Orson Welles’ singular life and career would run the length of a miniseries, but Chuck Workman engagingly hits a good many highlights in stone-skipping fashion in Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles,” writes McCarthy.
“Additionally, by delving into the protean talent’s bag of unfinished projects, the veteran documentary and clips-reel whiz tries to counter the view that Welles had a fear of completion later in life; as the film shows, he was always working, however under-financed he may have been. Premiered in a near-finished version at Telluride, this energetic, fast-moving portrait is a natural for festivals, specialty cinema venues internationally, TV and home formats.”
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles features interviews and appearances by Orson Welles himself, Simon Callow, Christopher Welles Foder, Jane Hill Sykes, Norman Lloyd, Ruth Ford, Julie Taymor, Peter Bogdanovich, James Naremore, Steven Spielberg, Henry Jaglom, Elvis Mitchell, and Beatrice Welles-Smith.
Watch the trailer below and see Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles when it opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 12, 2014.
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