Most people have never heard of New York City filmmaker and designer Benita Raphan, but the new documentary BENITA sets out to rectify that. Directed by Benita’s friend and colleague, Alan Berliner, the film is an intimate portrait of the artist, who tragically took her own life during the COVID pandemic.
Like many documentaries, BENITA is intercut with interviews with the subject’s friends and family, along with photos and home videos. However, what sets BENITA apart is the nearly exclusive use of Benita’s own work to make this film. Over the course of a year, Berliner went through all of Benita’s films, outtakes, photos and home movies, sketches, and journals to help him understand her as a person, and to try and make sense of her death. Berliner utilizes all of these archives to allow Benita’s story to unfold in her own words and from her point of view, creating a considerably more intimate portrait of a subject often found in documentaries.
We are not being told Benita’s story; we are listening to her tell it. We are experiencing her life through her work. The film trusts audiences to sit with her experiences, her memories, her uncertainties, and her ultimate sadness. While BENITA is Alan Berliner’s film, it’s Benita Raphan’s story, with Berliner acting as a conduit for Benita’s life.
By and large, Berliner balances the use of Benita’s work with the standard format of a portrait documentary nicely. There are times, however, when the multimedia approach to storytelling becomes a bit cumbersome, resulting in slight overstimulation. Those moments are fleeting, however, and overall, the use of Benita’s own words and imagery is very compelling and engaging.
While this is a portrait of a person, the themes explored are universal: personal success, self-expression, identity, and survival. The film invites the audience to reflect without imposing conclusions, allowing them to derive their own understanding of the film.
The film’s power comes from how it allows Benita’s story to unfold in her own voice, with her own cadence, never oversimplifying and never overanalyzing.
Quick Scan
A compelling and engaging intimate portrait of artist whose life was tragically cut short.