This new feature length documentary film from the award-winning team at ImageNation® is the first to explore the life and career of Sydney Pollack, which spawned such beloved films as The Way We Were, Tootsie, and Out of Africa. It is built upon an extensive personal interview with the Academy Award winning director from 2006. This film is a timely and needed celebration of the art of filmmaking from one of its true masters.
Sydney Pollack was one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, turning out 15 of the 20 films he directed between 1965 and 1985. In addition to directing, he was active as an actor, appearing in his own films as well as those of other directors, and as a producer. One of the last of the directors who came up through the studio system, Pollack carved a place for himself as an outspoken filmmaker able to straddle the art-versus-commerce divide and make films that were both artistically creative and commercially successful.
This film explores Pollack’s approach to directing, which was born as a boy going to the local movie theater in Lafayette, Indiana. So immersed was he in the world that unfolded on the big screen, the young Pollack found it took him some time to re-enter the real world: that then became the experience he wanted viewers of his films to have. This film paints the portrait of a unique filmmaker who made some of Hollywood’s most enduring motion pictures.