The last self-portrait of a philosophical film dreamer
When Richard P. Rogers died in 2001, he left behind over 200 hours of film footage of his life. A gigantic amount of raw material for a cinematic autobiography, which he was working on for 25 years and never managed to complete. Maybe, as he himself says in this reconstruction by his friend and pupil Alexander Olch, for fear of standing face to face with himself. The privileged film professor from Harvard grew up in an environment that would have been worthy of F. Scott Fitzgerald, among aristocrats and easy-living bons vivants in an intellectual and comfortable bourgeois environment on the American east coast. But also among personal tragedies and family malaise, which is more than alluded to in Olch's epic wickerwork of scenes from a life on the sunny side. Despite his obvious talent and perceptive nature, Rogers considered himself an artistic fiasco, who spent his life being haunted by his background. But 'The Windmill Movie's sophisticated mirror room of self-perception contradict him and fulfil his dream of uniting his life with film.
