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Robert Richardson: The White Devil
Sun
18
Sun 18 Oct 4:45 PM
The Mercury
General Admission
Unclassified 15+
105 MinsYou know you’re in for a fire-cracking documentary about cinematographer Robert Richardson when infamously intense director Oliver Stone (JFK, Platoon, Natural Born Killers) reckons he’s hard to work with. Fellow cinematographer Jana Hojdová’s debut documentary feature profile of the man who shot all three of the above films plus Scorsese masterpieces Casino and The Aviator, then got in bed with Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill. Debuting at A-list Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, this film is brilliant and bonkers in equal measure, with a hint of AFF 2025 gem Megadoc from director Mike Figgis. It all started with an email Hojdová never expected Richardson to answer. But soon she was catapulted into his uniquely gifted but invariably cranky life - realising that his adulation for cinema comes at the exclusion of all else. With candid insights from the likes of Stone, Scorsese, Tarantino, Kate Hudson, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr plus Richardson’s far-scattered family, this portrait of an incendiary artist pulls no punches. As Hudson puts it: “I’m sure you have to do a lot of psychedelics to see light the way he does.”