[SIDE BY SIDE is now available
on home video.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Anyone who has ever made the
acquaintance of Cleveland's ace resident-indie/experimental filmmaker
Robert C. Banks Jr. knows that the guy is an enthusiast for film -
real film, celluloid. Whether black-and-white, color-reversal, color
negative, Banks has been proponent of actual chemical emulsions, in
spite of the advances made by relatively bargain-rate, inferior
quality (at first) competitors like videotape and digital. Light
shown projected through real film frames, he said, is like looking
through stained-glass windows, which I always thought was a lovely
way to put it.
Well, Chris Kenneally's documentary
SIDE BY SIDE bids to be the ultimate smackdown in the
film-vs.-video argument. It didn't quite cover all bases for me, but
there is an all-star lineup and enough issues raised to keep a Robert
Banks debate going all night long.
