At a time when others were at a loss for words following the death of Benita Raphan, Alan Berliner was presented with the opportunity to start a conversation with her. He had known Raphan as an artist, having become a creative mentor to her over the years, but knew little of her personal life and certainly nothing that would lead her to eventually take her own life as had in 2021, only a few years after her creative genius had been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and she had begun work on a film called “Canine Cognition” about dogs’ sensitivity to the people in their life. Berliner was a natural call to make for Raphan’s family to see that film through when he was set to serve as an advisor on it, but the filmmaker’s singular practice of autobiographical filmmaking didn’t make him a particularly good fit and besides Raphan’s work couldn’t be replicated either, able to tap into the mysterious wavelengths that could make cinema so bewitching in her experimental shorts. However, Berliner nonetheless took a look at all the material that Raphan had left behind and realized it was telling him the kind of film it wanted to be and rather than feeling as if he would be putting the final touches on someone else’s film, he felt as if to make what would ultimately become “Benita,” he was making it in collaboration with her.
“Like all the portraits I make, I hope that the film is a measure of a life lived,” says Berliner. “And that’s a delicate aspiration, but I like to think Benita’s death comes with, through the film, a transcendent meaning a universal resonance. The film started out as a hunch, became a kind of leap of faith, then became a kind of guiding and sustaining intuition throughout the course of making it. But I’m happy to say that when I finally finish the film, I’d like to think together in this mysterious collaboration, we did something special.”
That may be an understatement for what “Benita” ends up being, remarkably taking on Berliner’s inimitable style as he invests himself just as personally as he would in one of the film’s connected to his own family, adding his own wry commentary to the mix as he generally would, yet works with only the archival materials that Raphan left behind, allowing her voice to come through just as clearly. The result is a film that honors her playful spirit and resourcefulness while Berliner considers subjects that weighed heavily on Raphan but may not have been able to articulate entirely on her own, from a rebellious youth in which she and her mother didn’t speak for 10 years as always sought to stand out from the crowd to eventually feeling hemmed in during the COVID lockdown when she had planned to work on her documentary about dogs as tribute to her own ailing pet Pele. It can appear that Raphan often felt tethered throughout her life as a true original in a world that too often rewards conformity, but in its glorious sprawl, “Benita” allows her radiant mind to reel and inspire the same feeling for audiences who will surely see the film as a gateway drug to her other work.
With the film making its world premiere this week at DOC NYC ahead of a weeklong theatrical run in the city at the DCTV Firehouse beginning November 28th, Berliner spoke about this unique project, looking at Raphan’s work in a whole new light and a sense of closure as well as opening up a new consciousness that comes with completing the film.
You explain this to some degree in the film, but when it’s a lot take on, what made you want to pursue this?
I was Benita’s mentor for a time and it was during COVID when her family contacted me after her death, which was shocking and sad. It opened up a whole series of questions about life and mortality and how well did I really know Benita and so forth. This [ended up as] the fourth portrait I’ve made and the three prior have been about family members, so there are a set of assumptions that you have when you make a film about a family member that anything you learn about them, whether it’s genetic, genealogical, cultural, or familial, you’re learning about yourself. That’s the mirror that you’re looking into and this seemed like a really interesting challenge to finally leave the safety, if you will, of a family space and make a portrait of someone that was a friend.
Benita and I had certain things in common. We were both experimental documentary filmmakers. We were both obsessive, and I had this relationship with her as a creative advisor. She trusted me. I believed in her. And I wasn’t working on another project [when this came up]. It just seemed organic. Her family came to me and agreed to give me everything she left behind and all the portraits I’ve made have been based on archives. In Benita’s case, we’re talking about notebooks, journals, letters and the miscellaneous material that filled 40 hard drives —her words, her videos, her films. It took me a year to go through it all.
At what point did you decide to limit yourself to those materials to actually make the film, other than the interviews you conduct?
Part of the discipline and a better word is even the patience that comes with taking on a project like this and understanding that being given such a large volume of stuff is that filmmaking is immersing in the life — the universe — of a another human being. Benita took a lot of photographs and video with her cell phone and as everyone knows when you take a photograph or a little QuickTime movie with your cell phone, it gives it a number but doesn’t label it [with a proper name] until you upload it to your computer. So there were folders in Benita’s hard drives with 8,000 photographs with only numbers for names and to make an interesting film, I had to know what was there in order to know whether it’s useful or valuable. That’s true not only for photographs but QuickTimes — little emo movies that she made — and along the way, I came upon a QuickTime file that just had a number, like 10,000 before it — and 10,000 after — in which Benita basically is addressing the camera, saying that she’s no longer going to make the film that I had been helping her with about “canine cognition,” [or] what it’s like to be a dog, but instead wanting to make a film about what the impact that COVID had on people with mental health issues. To me, that moment was deep and profound and a catalyst towards my way to approach her story.
I realized that in order to finish that film for her [after she had passed], that became a part of motivation. But in order to finish that film for her, I needed her help. I needed her collaboration, so I decided that as much as possible, every image, every sound, every piece of music, everything that I use in the film would be of Benita from Benita. Her written words, her spoken words, her images. And by doing so, I would not only imbue [the film] with this notion that we were collaborating, but sometimes [it felt] her words address me as the co-maker [of the film]. Sometimes she addresses the audience and says things that are direct to the viewer and sometimes she’s speaking, weighing in on whatever subject the film happens to be moving through. So it was about giving her a voice that she could help tell her own story.
And when you spend, and the film took four years to make — I had a cancer experience in the middle, which delayed the film. It’s another reason why it took a little long. But in that long gestation process, it was like her spirit enters the room and it really felt a lot of times that I was channeling her and that she was there with me in some way. I never had that experience before. So that was a very meaningful and deep experience for me.
I hope you’re doing better, health-wise.
I’m in remission, feeling good and ironically, when I got sick, I couldn’t touch it for almost eight months and this film was the ladder for me to climb out of a very dark place. I associate this film with getting stronger as an artist, as a filmmaker, and finding my focus again and it made me understand what being in a dark place is. I’m not comparing mental health to cancer, but I have to say, in the narration of the film, at one point, I did introduce my cancer and quickly realized there’s no comparison, so I took it out quickly. But nonetheless, the experience of my illness and my recovery made me reflect on some of the dark places that Benita inhabited in a way that made me more empathetic on many deeper levels. It was enlightening and maybe psychologically helpful to appreciate this Benita’s struggles.
The film is structured in such a way to seemingly honor her wishes to be introduced as an artist before getting to know her as a person. How did this take shape in that respect?
Once I embraced the mission of completing Benita’s film about mental health and COVID, then that meant COVID became a character in the film and could only go to a certain place towards the end of her life when her hair turned gray. I thought it was important to get the fact that she took her life out of the way and then get to know her history. But the truth is I didn’t know a lot about Benita’s childhood or her early years. I knew that she went to London and Paris and the film begins with her mother saying Benita was a really complicated little girl, [which is] not the first thing usually parents say about their children. That led me to understand that Benita’s mental health struggle was a longstanding issue in her life which she kept hidden and secret throughout her life.
The other thing [about] accepting Benita’s mission to change her film subject was that made me understand that the film was also going to be about mental health and how creativity and mental health interact. That made me look at the films that Benita chose to make, the subjects of the films that she chose to explore, each of whom was someone who overcame obstacles in order to create. I never looked at Benita’s work that way retrospectively.
Only in making the film retrospectively did I understand that she was telling a little part of her own story in every film that she was making and projecting upon these people. She was telling us about herself all the way through, and looking at her films comes at about a third of the way through the film when I felt you knew enough about her to look at her films in that way. You could see the films that she chose to make, then we could talk to the people who helped her make the films and learn about her character, her soulfulness, her kindness, her gratitude. And then at the middle of the film, we go deep into her psyche in that section where her journal entries are deep, soulful and honest, so [it was about] making her a real character, an artist and a filmmaker who struggled and overcame those struggles to make these beautiful works and did her best to stay strong throughout.
It was interesting to hear in the film that you looked at end credits of her work to learn who to reach out. Other than cold-calling people that shared the same name as yours in “The Sweetest Sound,” which was more light-hearted, was this a different experience?
Again, I didn’t know Benita’s life very well, so I didn’t even know who her friends were. I’d never met her mother or her sister. I just knew Benita, and also my wife had gone to high school with Benita, so that’s how I met her. But when I contacted these people, every one of them agreed to talk to me. No one said no. They all were had been somehow enchanted with her and felt a deep loyalty to her before I even spoke with them. I didn’t know what they were going to say. I learned that Benita had access to this world of high-end commercial film [where] they’re using expensive video tools and she had access to some really great composers. I was aghast when one of them mentioned that she got hundreds of thousands of dollars of work for free, but their belief and their trust in her and their embrace of her was something that I understood myself because I was always happy to be there if Benita ever needed my help as well.
What’s it like to get to this point with the film?
It’s exciting for sure. Anytime you bring a new film into the world, there’s excitement and a little trepidation. Her family will be seeing the film for the first time, and I look forward to that, but I have no illusions that the film will open up an avalanche of powerful emotions for them. That comes with the territory and I hope I’ve fulfilled whatever hopes or aspirations they had for allowing me to make this film. They gave me all this stuff, but certainly they didn’t know necessarily what was in it. They had no idea that there was buried in one of the 40 hard drives was a file in which Benita said she was no longer making her canine cognition film. So there’ll be things about Benita that they will learn from the film and I’m glad that they’re going to see the film in front of a large audience because I think also that Benita doesn’t belong to them anymore. And Benita doesn’t belong to me anymore. She’s now part of a broader conversation. That’s her gift to us.
Benita’s family initially contacted me and asked me if I would finish the film she’d been working on, which was “Canine Cognition,” and I said to them, no one can really do that. Benita had a unique approach and style. But then I thought about it for a day or two, and I said, “Maybe a portrait.” And all my films are labors of love and it doesn’t never matter for a second that she wasn’t a family member. I had a lot of empathy with Benita and respect for her and affection for her and I want that to come out, come through the film. But in a way, I’d like to think that we in collaboration complete both of the films [Benita had in mind at the time of her death]. I think I conveyed her love of dogs and her fascination with canine cognition in combination, but because Benita usually makes portraits of people, and I do personal films, Benita’s new idea [of a film about mental health] was a personal film and I finished her personal film by making a portrait of her, so there’s a sort of role reversal. I hope that if I’ve done it right, the film gives Benita a universal resonance, a legacy and can help people think about mental health issues and that there are challenges for all of us — and our challenges, our foibles, our flaws, sometimes make us who we are and often become our secret powers.
“Benita” will screen at DOC NYC on November 14th at 7 pm at the IFC Center and November 16th at 11:30 am at the Village East.