Tivoli / Time Zero

Francisco's latest visit counted as his birthday weekend, even though it wasn't his birthday. His real birthday (and a momentous birthday at that) is during my visit to Diana and Fred who happen to live in the Bahamas (I think) (Francisco: "You're going to the Bahamas for my 30th birthday?")

For his birthday, I took him to the St. Louis International Film Festival's showing of Time Zero, a documentary about the last year of Polaroid film (which, SPOILER ALERT!: was not actually the last year of Polaroid film). The film was showing at the Tivoli, a lovely old theater at the Loop.

The documentary was incredibly interesting and thought-provoking and imperfect. It argues that the disappearance of Polaroid pictures is a great loss--that Polaroid pictures are an event to which neither analogue nor digital photography can compare. Polaroid pictures are the only ones that exist as an artifact immediately after being taken.

While I'm a big fan of most nostalgia, this nostalgia has a lot of logical holes in it--the documentary often implied that Polariod pictures were the only ones that are printed and preserved, that if Polaroids disappear, no one will have old shoe boxes filled with pictures anymore. It made me wonder how well Polaroid pictures themselves actually hold up over time.

It also made me wonder what really is so special about the Polaroid? Its immediacy? If so, then isn't social media a successor of Polaroid? Instagram seems so obviously to walk in Polaroid's footsteps that I found it odd that the documentary never mentioned it.

The documentary also made me curious about what Polaroid contributes to the art of photography. It alluded several times to famous photographers, such as Ansel Adams, using Polaroid, but showed few examples of Polaroids as art (as opposed to as record), particularly in the early years of Polaroid.

Sadly, the film quality was poor--but I think that it was the theater and not the film itself that was to blame. The sound was crackly as a speaker was out, and the film didn't properly fit on the screen. I thought it was a shame that a film festival wouldn't take more pains to ensure a comfortable viewing experience.