‘Ross McElwee documents his own life as an amateur would do so, but the difference is that McElwee is a film-maker and that he records the life of a film-maker with a professional 16mm camera.’ That is how film-maker Ross McElwee was introduced in 1994 at the festival as ‘Home Movie Master’. A few years have passed now and McElwee has just had a son. In his latest film McElwee, whose voice-over accompanies the pictures, worries about the constant stream of unpleasant news on the TV: fires, hurricanes, murders… He wonders what kind of world he lives in, and what kind of world his son has to grow up in. When he comes across a news report about a hurricane that has destroyed an island off the coast of South Carolina, he decides to look up an acquaintance who lives there, Sharleen. In this way McElwee takes different news reports as an excuse to look up people involved and to bring the tragedies back to manageable proportions, something that the ultra-short, preformed television reports can’t or won’t do. With these and other slices of life, Ross McElwee in a fascinating way tries to make sense of a chaotic America in the grip of (media) violence. He illustrates his journey with humorous moments, such as the scene in which a TV crew comes to film him at home and McElwee parries them with his own camera.
