It's All True

"It's All True" was the title of an unfinished Orson Welles documentary about South America shot in 1942. Welles was asked by Nelson Rockefeller to make the film to support the war effort, and as part of the Good Neighbor Policy and was sent down to Brazil to shoot the footage on location. RKO Radio Pictures quickly cut the funding for the project after dissatisfaction with the way the project was being run. All the footage shot by Welles was locked up in the RKO vaults, and for many years was believed to be lost, until it resurfaced in 1993. The original documentary would have consisted of three short pieces, My Friend Bonito, Carnaval, and Four Men on a Raft, seen here. Internet Movie Database reports that a fourth segment, featuring Louis Armstrong performing in New Orleans was planned, but no footage was filmed. A documentary about a documentary... or a documentary about a myth? The fascinating thing about the Wilson-Meisel-Krohn 1993 documentary about the infamous uncompleted Welles film is how it somehow becomes what Welles was aiming for all along. No script? He was the script. The man with the 16 mm Kodak in the middle of the dancing, perfumed mob of the Carnival is following the narrative instinct of the era: the lst person singular, where "I" is the unity. He could be Henry Miller, he could be Antonin Artaud... but in this case, he's Orson Welles, artist provocateur, a man well-schooled in the use of the new media to sell his personality. This text and more here via Culture Court....