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This collector's edition box set includes six of McElwee's best films, four of them never before available on DVD.
Titles included:
Charleen
59 minutes, color, 1978
One month in the life of Charleen Swansea, North Carolina poet, mother, beloved
teacher, eccentric, romantic, and complex star of McElwee's Sherman's March.
"Charleen is an irresistible force caught beautifully on the run." - The New York Times
Backyard
40 minutes, color, 1984
The result of McElwee turning his camera on his family and their neighbors,
the film is a humorous and poignant look at odd moments in a genteel Southern
town.
"Backyard is equal parts Samuel Beckett, Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog."
- Boston Globe
Sherman's March
155 minutes, color, 1986
Chosen by the Library of Congress as a "historically significant American
motion picture," Sherman's March, one of the first high grossing documentaries
ever, is “an autobiographic quest for true romance: filmmaker Ross McElwee,
camera in hand and eros on his mind after an old girlfriend deserts him, trains
his lens with phallic resolve on every accessible women he meets along the original
route of General Sherman's Civil War March" (Pat Graham, Chicago Reader's
Circle).
"A wonderfully goofy movie!" - The New
York Times
Time Indefinite
117 minutes, color, 1993
McElwee, Charleen Swansea, and several other memorable characters you met in
Sherman's March invite you to pick up their story in Time Indefinite, McElwee's
hilariously profound sequel to his much-beloved, critically acclaimed hit.
"The best film of the year! Glorious! A sequel that eclipses his cult hit
Sherman's March. Profoundly stirring, bittersweet and uplifting!" - Washington
Post
Six O'Clock News
103 minutes, color, 1997
Made after McElwee becomes a father and finds himself at home watching a lot
more TV, he becomes obsessed with the nightly tales of calamity reported on
by the local news.
"Another disarming, quirky cinematic journal from Ross McElwee." - The New
York Times
Bright Leaves
105 minutes, color, 2004
McElwee family legend has it that the Hollywood melodrama Bright Leaf starring
Gary Cooper as a 19th century tobacco grower, is based on McElwee's great-grandfather
who created the famous "Bull Durham” brand. Using this legacy as
a jumping off point, McElwee reaches back to his roots in this wry, witty rumination
on American History, the tobacco business, and the myth of cinema.
"Brilliantly amusing. . . just sings along!" - Washington Post
"An American humorist in a tradition from Mark Twain
through Garrison Keillor."
- The New York Times
"For the past twenty-five years, Ross McElwee has given new meaning and flair
to first-person non-fiction cinema. Always wise and irreverent, ever the unreliable narrator, McElwee makes the grandest themes of human comedy his artistic province:
love and death, chance and fate, memory and denial, the marvelous and the appalling."
- The Museum of Modern Art
"McElwee paved the way for Michael Moore and Morgan
Spurlock." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Accept no imitations: A film by Ross McElwee could be made by no other.
Since his hilarious autobiographical breakthrough, Sherman's March, the profound
artist-philosopher has been using his own life as a springboard to examine humankind's
biggest issues, and tiniest. McElwee makes movies the way life might, ideally,
be lived."
- Entertainment Weekly
"One of those rare filmmakers for whom the word visionary
is appropriate."
- The Boston Globe
Landscapes of the Self: The Cinema of Ross McElwee ed. Efren Cuevas and Alberto Garcia
Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography by David Shields and Ross McElwee
● Two interviews with Ross McElwee
● Outtakes with commentary by McElwee
● Follow-ups with characters from Bright Leaves
● Music Tracks
● Photo Gallery
● Film Notes
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