MQFF NOTES: Regarding Susan Sontag (2014, Dir. Nancy Kates)

The fierce intellectualism of Susan Sontag got a bit of a dressing down in the panel that followed Nancy Kates' documentary portrait Regarding Susan Sontag. Surprisingly, much of the defense of the famously contentious writer came from the audience. And from the only writer on the panel, Christos Tsiolkas.

Having already seen (and enjoyed) the film, I was really only attending to hear what the panel of Melbourne University academics would add to Kates' TV bio take on Sontag's life. But besides picking apart the film's over-reliance on staged visual chewing gum (probably a budget thing), there was little engagement with the work itself. Instead, the panel went after Sontag, largely for her refusal to buy into various labels, including (pertinently) queerness.

The bone of contention, of course, is Sontag's own sexuality on which she apparently stayed tight lipped, at least with family. Kates' film posits that Sontag's outs herself repeatedly within her work and, as one of her interviewees states, "Does the author of 'Notes on Camp' really have to out herself?"

Though it may have been a little snippy, interesting points were made regarding Sontag's theories and how they could be applied to the way she lived her own life. They were points that both added and detracted from Kates' slant here. I don't know Sontag deeply enough to comment explicitly (I don't have the very personal connection that Tsiolkas related during the discussion) but I will certainly be finally opening up my copy of 'Notes on Interpretation' very soon.

The film, then, not without its faults but still a solid primer.

★★★☆

Trailer:

Regarding Susan Sontag screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.