#the b-side

Elsa Dorfman

“Elsa, do you think the camera tells the truth?”

“Absolutely not. You take 20 pictures in two minutes, and they’re so different. Um... I think it’s just-- It’s, I mean, that’s what I love about it, it’s not real at all.”

The B-Side by B. Harmony: Exclusive Excerpt & Giveaway!

Exclusive Excerpt from The B-Side

by B. Harmony

I turn to leave the bathroom and head back to the kitchen. Nearing the end of the hall, the kitchen in full view, I stop mid-stride. I can feel the side of my mouth lift up. Tyler is in the middle of the kitchen holding a wooden spoon to his mouth while belting out the lyrics along to “I Like Me Better” by Lauv. More than just the karaoke…

Firstly, this was a new venue for me and I bloody love it. Like an American diner from Alabama crashed into Terry Hooleys shop it’s a clatter of styles and decor that works, not too big, not too wee and from what I heard, great sound.

  The B-Sides

The B-sides kicked off the evening with a barrage of punk standards played well and with increasing enthusiasm as the night wore on and drunker folks started to get up for a wee dance.

The Damned, the Clash, Pistols and even the Buzzcocks got a look in as they rattled through a well chosen selection of the best punk tunes from the 70’s and early 80’s.

Like Snuff, it’s a singing drummer arrangement and they certainly know how to play, as I said, they livened up as the crowd started to join in and admirably delivered in the warm up slot. I would gladly go see them again, this was a first for me.

  The Defects.

What can you say about the Defects?

40 years and still blattering away at the scene they deserve so much more recognition than they have ever received. It seems unfair that SLF and the Undertones are so much more household names when the Defects are only really known in punk circles. Something should be done about it.

With an armoury of self penned tunes that would be the envy of many, the Defects own the place. I last saw them supporting the Exploited in the Mandella hall in Belfast and the wife reckoned that the Defects put on the better show of the night. They know how to pace their setlist and with their experience they know how to light the crowd and keep them lit.

Did I mention they’re on their 40th year?

Their 40 year t-shirt is pretty cool, we came home with a few, and the merch is up to par with the best out there.

For anyone who is unaware of the Defects and even has a passing interest in punk I urge you to go see them at your first opportunity, first wave bands are thin on the ground especially talented and dedicated ones like this bunch of lads. Unlike a lot of groups that grew more cynical and started to look to their bottom line this bunch give the impression that they mean what they say and are in it for the rebellion and the f*ck you attitude that they still exude.

Defects in name but definitely not defective in any way, shape or form.

Belfast punk at its finest in Antrims premier punk/rock venue. Do yourself a favour and go see them soon.

Stand up for your rights.

Review by Dr Rock

THE B-SIDE: ELSA DORFMAN’S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY (2016)

Featuring Elsa Dorfman.

Directed by Errol Morris.

Distributed by Neon. 76 minutes. Rated R.

Errol Morris is arguably the best documentarian of the last 30-40 years. He’s certainly one of the most diverse. In recent years, he is best known for doing long, detailed interview films with men who are extremely controversial, to the point that they have been called war criminals by some of their opponents – Robert McNamara in The Fog of War and Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known. Morris pretty much invented the true-crime documentary with the stunning 1988 film The Thin Blue Line, a movie that is greatly responsible for freeing an innocent man on death row. He was even brave enough to take on the film version of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

However, Morris has always had a lighter side, too, which turned the camera on normal, eccentric people. His brilliant debut Gates of Heaven was about people who used the services of a pet cemetery. Fast Cheap and Out of Control looks at a group of aging men with extremely offbeat career paths. Vernon, Florida is an unconventional look at the citizens of a small town in the Sunshine State.

The sweet, charming, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography is another one of his more whimsical films. There is nothing particularly substantive or deep about The B-Side, though it does have a melancholy undercurrent about the death of film in a digital world. However, the movie is more like sitting down and listening as a nice little old grandma chats about her life for a while, granted one who had a very cool one with some extremely cutting-edge friends.

Still, it is just that lack of pretense which makes The B-Side so appealing. Dorfman is an amiable storyteller, and she has interesting little anecdotes about just about everyone who was anyone in the Greenwich Village beat scene: from Bob Dylan, to Anais Nin, to Joni Mitchell, to Jorge Luis Borges, to Allen Ginsberg – the last of whom was a good friend for most of her life.

Elsa Dorfman is a portrait photographer, one who changed a hobby into a life-long, mostly acclaimed career. In recent decades, Dorfman’s palette has been a specialized Polaroid camera – one of only five in the world – which takes poster-sized prints. The film came to be when Dorfman – a longtime friend of director Morris – was forced to retire when Polaroid film was discontinued, due to anemic sales in a world of digital cameras.

Morris just turns his lens on Dorfman, in her little New England studio, and lets her talk. Talks about her life, talks about art, talks about her successes, talks about her difficulties, talks about the difficulty of making money, talks about the steady march of time. All the while, we see dozens of Dorfman’s portraits, a life’s work of fascinating images of both the famous and the common people.

Dorfman is an upbeat, engaging conversationalist, so the short (76 minutes) film flies by. It is a sweet tribute to an individual and refreshingly humble artist whose art may be getting left behind.

Jay S. Jacobs

THE B-SIDE REVIEWED “The B-Side” left me in a weird place. I get that the film opened last week, but most people weren’t going to have the chance to see it opening weekend. So, what does one do with a rather short documentary about a niche photographer? Elsa Dorfman is a fascinating entry point to a story about the death of film stock. However, Morris also wants to explore an almost “Outliers”…