Robert Frank doesn’t like interviews. Early in “Don’t Blink: Robert Frank,” Laura Israel’s new documentary about the artist premiering at the New York Film Festival on October 4, archival footage shows a television journalist attempting to ask him questions. Frank stares off into space, refuses to answer, or glares back at the camera, making the moment as tense as possible.Israel had the same problem at first. “I asked some questions like, ‘Why did you give up photography?’ I did not get a good response to that one,” she says. “He was like, ‘You better come up with some better questions.’ ”Still, that he was speaking to her at all was a triumph. Frank has always resisted giving himself over to this kind of project, creating an aura of mystery around both artist and work His cooperation here is a token of the trust between him and Israel, who is both a friend and a collaborator who worked with Frank on video projects. Ironically, that very relationship made her hesitant at first about making the documentary. But then she realized that it would enable her to capture something that others could not. Frank must have agreed. In this film, or the first time, he opens up about his life and career.That said, Israel has told ARTINFO that she intended her film merely to provide context, leaving the mystery in Frank’s work intact. No secrets are revealed, no keys provided to unlock the doors of his brain. There are simply stories and images — many, many beautiful images — and Frank’s unique way of looking at the world.Frank is scheduled to appear at the screening on October 4, despite his aversion to public accolades. “He said he would be there. I think he’s maybe just taking a bow,” Israel explained. “He said he’s going to wear a disguise, so people are going to have to find Robert somewhere in the audience.” An enduring enigma.When did you begin working with Robert?In the late 1980s. The first thing we worked on was a music video for the band New Order. And once I met Robert, we got along. My studio was on Broadway and Bleecker Street, and I live on 4th Street and Avenue A. I would run into him on my way to work and on my way home, and I became friends with him and his wife, June. They would stop by the studio, and [the relationship] just developed.How did your relationship develop into this film?I’ve been an editor for a long time, but I finally directed a film, “Windfall,” and I went to IDFA. I was paired with the writer Tue Steen Müller, who had written about Godard as a documentary filmmaker, so I thought he would be a great person to speak to. He was really gruff, and then I said, “I thought we would get along because I work with Robert Frank.” He insisted that I do this movie. He said, “You have to do it.” Even when I was leaving, he said, “Call me when you do that film. I want to know.” I just sent him an email, and he was really happy. But on the plane, I kept thinking, “No, no, I work with Robert. That would make me so uncomfortable to do something about him, since I know him so well. Then I started getting all these ideas.How did Robert react when you told him your ideas?He had the same reaction. I said, “What would you think about me doing a film about you?’ He said, “No, no, we work together.” But I could tell he was thinking about it, even though I dropped the subject. By the end he said, “Come back tomorrow. We’ll talk about it, that might be a good idea.” It was like we were both hesitant at first for the same reasons. We know each other too well. But that became a really good reason to actually do it. Then Robert was like, “All right, let’s start shooting right away!” That took me by surprise, and I really had to get it together. He just wanted to do it right away once he made the decision.Why do you believe that, at this point in his life and career, he started thinking this was a good idea?Well, I think it’s partly because of [our] relationship, but it’s also because he was ready for it. I could tell as soon as I started asking him questions that he wanted to tell these stories, he wanted to talk about a lot of these things. We started with the early New York stuff, and he just went off. It was great to hear some of those stories. I had first wanted to make a film about him as a filmmaker and not as much about him as a photographer. I felt that was something people don’t know as well about him. But I realized, when I started to ask him questions, that he talked about both interchangeably, as if they were the same thing. So I couldn’t separate the two, and it became a bigger film, obviously. The film shows you digging into his extensive archives. Did that change the shape of the film in your head?It definitely did, because when I first started shooting, I didn’t do any research. I knew Robert, I knew his films, and I had worked with him. But there is a whole other level of understanding once you get the context of his work and the progression of his work, how everything fits together. I knew the films well, but I didn’t know that he, for example, had written for Creative Camera magazine. I got excited when I read that. It made perfect sense, but I didn’t know it. My editor, Alex Bingham, and I spent so much time looking at the books and reading everything and getting anything anybody had shot of Robert, any interviews, stuff like that. Some of this stuff was hard to find. We had to search for people who would find us copies. Sometimes they were the only copies that existed.I imagine you could go on discovering layers of Robert forever.Even June, his wife, said, “I bet you could work on this film forever, and it would just keep getting better and better.” I said, “Yeah, but I have to do something else eventually in my life.” We had to decode a lot of it too. It’s interesting, the way Robert makes it so you have to think about it. He doesn’t put it all out there for everybody. I didn’t want to put it out there for everybody either. I wanted to keep that mystery about Robert, to keep people engaged in trying to learn more about Robert. He didn’t want to explain everything, which you can see in the film. I hope I was successful in keeping that, giving context but not too much information.It’s important that there’s still a mystery around Robert.Right. With some art films, you feel like, I know everything about this person, and now the work seems boring all of a sudden.The film contains some of Robert’s friends but not a lot of other voices. It’s intimate in that way. You don’t have any talking-head interviews.I did a couple of interviews and did a little edit, and it became obvious to me that it wasn’t that kind of film. It was very early on, before I involved Tom Jarmusch or Ed Lachman or anybody like that. I decided to go in a different direction. We could have Robert having a conversation with these people, or go out and do something with them. The interviews just didn’t go with the footage of Robert. Somebody who saw the rough cut said, “Oh, it’s just Robert and his friends!”Do you feel like Robert is a collaborator in the film?A lot of his footage is in the film, so it has to be that way. I couldn’t have made the film if I didn’t have his work. It was amazing to work with his images, his films and videos and photographs, and try to think of some way to give them context and work around them so it wasn’t obtrusive but accompanied [them]. We gave a lot of thought about how we were going to shoot the film that wasn’t a copy of Robert Frank but went along with [his work] and didn’t stick out too much. It was fun to do that.
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