Ross McElwee
United States | 1996 | 103 min
Language : English
Subtitle : French
McElwee deals with the question of how people manage to get on after surviving those tragedies everyone thinks will happen to others. The vulnerability of new-born Adrian is at the extreme opposite relative to the brutality of the surrounding world. Six O’clock News interrelates McElwee’s cinema with the constant proliferation of images from the media.
The last image in Time Indefinite connects straight with the first one in Six O’clock News. Adrian’s birth interrelates the filmmaker, or the filmmaker figure that now seems to overlap with that of Ross McElwee, with the world of daily tragedies that seep in the life of the protagonist from TV. After facing the chain of deaths in the previous film and welcoming Adrian in his life, McElwee poses the question of how people manage to get on after surviving those tragedies everyone thinks will happen to others. The vulnerability of the new-born Adrian is at the extreme opposite relative to the brutality of the surrounding world. The desire to investigate how different survival modes allow people to go on with their lives intertwines with ethical issues: how to ask people to tell the misfortunes they suffered to the camera. By tying McElwee’s cinema and the constant proliferation of images from the media, Six O’clock News poses inescapable questions on an ethical management of information.
Giona A. Nazzaro
